In Bob Newhart’s second hit comedy, Newhart, He played a Vermont innkeeper with one simple goal: to read the newspaper uninterrupted.
That didn’t happen.
One of the people who stood in his way the most was Stephanie VanderKelen, the spoiled heiress turned incompetent maid. Julia DuffyThe character is young, energetic, blonde and entitled. Newhart played… Newhart.
From the Monday morning script read through to the Friday night taping, Newhart and Duffy did a comedic dance. Newhart, I observed their chemistry firsthand: they could elicit laughter with the smallest of gestures, like a slow blink or a raised eyebrow.
Duffy received seven Emmy nominations for her performance on the show, and Newhart three. (Unbelievably, Newhart’s only Emmy win was for Big Bang theory.)
On July 18, upon news that Newhart had died at age 94, Duffy posted a heartbreaking tribute.
A few days later I contacted her to express my condolences.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week,” Duffy said by phone, “and I thought, ‘Has anyone ever been so unassuming on the surface and yet had such a big impact?'”
She continued, “Of course, if I said that to Bob, he’d say, ‘Well, there was Jesus,’ and that would probably be his response: ‘And then there’s me.’
Read this exchange aloud to hear how perfectly Duffy understood Newhart’s unique comedic voice: Below is the rest of our conversation, condensed and lightly edited.
As one of the stars of Newhart, your name will forever be linked with his. That’s great, isn’t it?
It’s so lovely, and I have such fondness for the history of comedy and all the people he worked with, and Jack Benny, who was such a big influence on him.
Bob seemed to be more tolerant of women doing funny things than a lot of his men were. On his first sitcom, “The Bob Newhart Show,” Suzanne Pleshette and Marcia Wallace were both very funny. And he obviously enjoyed your work. Is that true for you?
It seemed to me that on our set, fun was everything. Fun was king, and nothing else mattered. It was the goal, it was sacred.
Bob’s assessment of me was… He never directly complimented me. I don’t think stand-up comedians do that. It’s not their language. And I never expected or needed to hear what he thought of my work. But he treated me as an equal from the beginning. That was the validation I needed. That kind of equality wasn’t the norm yet. We didn’t have Tina. [Fey] Amy [Poehler] So it was with the comedians at the time, and the other standard-bearers, so it was all about being treated as an equal as a young woman in comedy.
Plus, Bob wasn’t a very enthusiastic person. In the beginning, we were just socializing and [Newhart’s wife of 60 years] Ginny said, “Is he telling you how amazing he thinks you are?”
I laughed and said, “Well, not really.”
She then turned to him and said something along the lines of, “Newhart, you tell me all this… why don’t you tell her?”
It was really funny to see Ginny being so forthright with Bob because he doesn’t show his emotions very much. Bob married the perfect person. She was amazing. With Ginny, you can get away with anything. I also love that she calls Bob “Newhart.”
Bob Newhart performs at the Mill Run Theatre in Niles, Illinois in 1973.
William Vendetta/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Someone said that Bob blinks strangely. Do you agree?
His blinks were as well-timed as his famous pauses, and the way he paused mid-joke was like saying to the audience, “Now you get the joke and you can start laughing.” It was remarkable what he did.
I think of him as a “contextual comedian.” That’s why he was perfect for sitcoms. And in his stand-up comedy, he would create scenarios for his characters to react to. For example, the president of the West Indies Company would say, Sir Walter Raleigh’s phone call And for the first time, I heard about cigarettes. (“So, you roll a cigarette, where do you put it?… You put it between your lips, Walt? And then what do you do with it?”) [laughs and laughs] “Did you start the fire?”
And it was a situation where a person would have to deal with something that they were totally unprepared to deal with. He was just reacting.
I just did two episodes. Night Court I worked with Melissa Rauch, she’s such a lovely person, and of course I worked with Bob. The Big Bang TheoryAnd she really understands that pure comedy isn’t dependent on the current era — the current way of speaking or the current memes — because those things change. But when you find the funny in something that’s timeless, that’s comedy at its purest and best. Monty Python will be funny forever.
New Heart It didn’t touch on modern topics. I really wanted the show to be entertaining for decades to come. Melissa understood that. She watched the show and wanted to follow in our footsteps. It seemed cosmic to me that this pure comedy could be passed down, respected, absorbed and passed on from generation to generation.
“I would say to young people, if you’re interested in comedy, you need to know who Ernie Kovacs is. You need to know where we come from. I worked with Tom Poston, who did one of Bert Lahr’s vaudeville acts. I feel very fortunate to have a connection to vaudeville.
I loved WC Fields, and I remember once I was talking with Peter Scolari about the movie “Million Dollar Legs,” and he said, “Speaking of Bill Fields…” I’d never heard anyone call him “Bill Fields,” and it was as if they were old friends. But in a way, they were.
We were all comedy nerds – in fact, Peter’s favorite comedian was Buster Keaton.
I remember when my husband, Jerry, and I were preparing a TV night for our kids to watch Abbott and Costello for the first time. Jerry said, “What if the kids don’t think it’s funny?” I said, “Well, just don’t do it.” Luckily, the kids laughed and we both A wicked sense of humor So we were right to indoctrinate them.
Bob Saget, Bob Newhart and Jimmy Kimmel attend the charity event.
Katherine Page/Getty Images
When was the last time you spoke to Bob?
We spoke after his birthday last year. His birthday is September 12th, just like Peter’s. [Scolari who died in 2021 and is known to millennials as Tad Horvath, Heather’s father on Girls]We had been talking a lot, having lost Peter the previous year.
Bob always responded to my messages, but at a certain point everything started going through Jerry. [Digney]Ginny, Bob’s longtime friend and publicist, … one year And Bob couldn’t imagine life without her. It seemed impossible. He needed her desperately.
But I had been in contact with their youngest child, Courtney, and I knew that Bob was home, that the family knew this was going to happen, and that they were all there.
Is there a story or moment that you and Bob consider to be a favorite?
The most memorable moment was right at the beginning. The character, Stephanie, hadn’t been here very long. She’d moved out and her parents wanted her to come back. So, in this episode, I was on the phone with my parents, and it was so funny, and you guys were obviously just listening to me. And then I was rehearsing and Bob was walking across the stage with a cup of coffee and he stopped and looked at me.
So I said, “Don’t look. You can’t see me doing comedy phone calls.”
And he said, “It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?”
