Former Golden Girl Betty White, 86, was on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson yesterday and her interview made me laugh out loud several times. Her lines were scripted jokes, but she delivered them so well it hardly mattered. I was pretty surprised when I looked up her age for this article, because I assumed she was in her 70s. She looks great and she still has very good comic timing.

White brought out a bunch of receipts in a shoe box and told Ferguson she wanted to get her taxes done before the deadline. Ferguson asked “What about the interview?”

White said “What does it matter? You usually just talk about yourself. It’s ‘Blah Blah I’m so funny. Blah blah I had a penis enlargement.’”

Ferguson told her he had a problem with her doing her taxes on the show, and she said “Do you want me to get audited by the IRS? I don’t want them taking me up in their ship and shoving all kinds of weird probes in me.”

Ferguson asked “Is there anyway I can help you get this all finished?”

“What would you know about taxes? You’re an illegal immigrant… To me you’ll always be ‘Craig Ferguson, the dirty French bastard.’”

“Betty, you don’t have to be stressed about your taxes, I got an extension.”

“There you go again about your penis enlargement.”

Craig said they better wrap it up, and Betty asked if she could plug something before she left.

Craig said she’s going to film a Disney movie called The Proposal with Sandra Bullock, and she said that’s true, but “actually I wanted to plug that Will Smith movie, Bad Boys, it’s playing on Showtime right now. And it’s a hell of a lot better than this crap fest.”

“He’s great Will Smith, isn’t he?”

“Yes he is. I’ve never had him.”

Here’s the interview, thanks to monkeyboy on Redlasso.

Betty White is shown in the header on 6/15/07 at the daytime Emmy Awards, thanks to PRPhotos.

Anne Heche was on the “Late Late Show” with Craig Ferguson and in his funny “roll with me” interview style he got her to talk about some pretty controversial issues in her life.

On cheating with James Tupper
Ferguson first asked her if she fell in love with James Tupper on the set of their show, “Men in Trees,” and she admitted that they did have feelings for each other on set.

Then Ferguson told a story about how he fell for a woman he was playing lovers with, and Anne asked “Were you married at the time.” Craig said “yes,” and she asked “And did you stay married?” and he said “no.” (According to Wikipedia, Ferguson has been married and divorced twice, so this could have been true.)

Heche said “Neither did I [stay married]” and “it happens.”

Both Anne Heche and James Tupper were married and had children with their spouses when they hooked up on set.

On the tabloids
Ferguson asked “Do you get bothered by that? All the tabloids… chasing you around? You’ve had a few adventures in the tabloids.”

“I’ve had a few adventures in life.”

On being gay
Craig reminded Anne of running into her years ago in NY when he was hanging out with British director Brian Gibson, and she half-heartedly claimed to have remembered him.

Craig joked that he was making out with him, and Anne said “I didn’t know Brian was gay,” and he quickly shot in “Were you?”

He said “You were gay for a bit… you have an open mind.”

Anne said “I have yes - had an open mind. But then I make decisions, ‘I have an open mind, but then I’ve learned about that. Fantastic’”

“I have an open mind, I can change my mind.”

“There’s a door, we can close that door. We can go to another door.”

Toward the end of the interview Craig asked Anne about filming in Vancouver and whether she would consider becoming a Canadian citizen. She said “sure.” He reminded the audience that her boyfriend and co-star, James Tupper, is Canadian and that she might consider Canadian citizenship if she married him. Last week’s Star Magazine reported that they were planning a June wedding.

Here’s a clip:

Anne Heche is shown in the header image filming a movie on Robertson Boulevard with Ashton Kutcher on 4/4/08, thanks to Splash News.

Last week we briefly mentioned that there was a possibility that the late night talk show hosts would return to work in the next few months. It’s looking like that will definitely happen, and all five of the hosts are trying to coordinate their return so they all come back on the same night. Their hope is to avoid some of the ire of the WGA and skirt the criticism that Ellen DeGeneres and Carson Daly received when they returned to work. Ellen hardly stopped work at all – a week at the most – and Carson returned a few weeks ago. Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson are all talking with each other behind closed doors, trying to agree on a date when they’ll all go back to work.

If the late-night shows go back into production before the strike is settled, at least some members of the Writers Guild will understand - the late-night comedy writers themselves. “We will never be able to repay [Letterman] for what he did for us,” says “Late Show” writer Bill Sheft, who also serves as the show’s union rep for the Writers Guild. “Dave Letterman on the air without writers and pissed off about it would be as powerful as anything we [union members] can do. He will rail nightly at the greedy pinheads that put him in this position.

“He made the right decision, and when and if he decides to come back, it will be the right decision,” Sheft said. Letterman was the first late-night host who said he would continue to pay his staff out of his own pocket while the strike was on. The other late-show hosts soon followed when the networks began informing the idled late-night staffs that they would be laid off. “We understand the ‘Late Show,’ ” Sheft says. “The fact that other shows fell in line after him is enormous . . . We can march in a circle all day and blog all we want, but, to me, he’s been an off-air supporter. Maybe his greatest potential is as an on-air provocateur.”

“Believe me, all these guys are going crazy,” says one late-night talk show executive. “They’ve had to sit on the sidelines for the last six weeks and watch the world go by without having their soapboxes. It’s hard for them, and it’s getting harder “The fact is they’re talking, but no one wants to be first or the only one, for that matter,” says a knowledgeable network executive. “But I think their power will come in their solidarity. It’s a hot potato.”

[From the New York Post]

It actually does make a lot of sense that the late night hosts could be very vocal advocates for their writers if they choose to come back on the air. It seems like they’ve done the best job they could, and will have stayed off the air for several months in a show of support. A lot of crew and staff members lost their jobs, and most of the late night hosts covered their salaries themselves. If they’re on the air and able to plug their writers every night, that could actually be a good thing. And considering how supportive all the hosts have been so far, I think that’s a reasonable expectation.

In more lighthearted news, both Conan O’Brien and David Letterman have been showing off their “Strike Beards.” Conan even made a YouTube video plugging the strike beard. That’s really not fair, as a woman I can’t show my solidarity by growing a strike beard. I’m trying to figure out what I could do instead… strike hairy legs? Yeah, I’m going with that. “No I’m not lazy, I’m supporting writers!” I will be so extra-dateable now.