Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week. HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — When you sign up to attend the taping of a late-night show , you never know what guests you’ll get.
Last month for a taping of CBS’s “After Midnight” (12:35 a.m. weekdays, KDKA-TV), I lucked out and got to see two celebrity panelists with Pittsburgh ties: former “Community” star Gillian Jacobs, a 2000 graduate of Mt.
Lebanon High School, and drag queen Alaska (AKA Justin Andrew Honard), who grew up near Erie and once lived in Pittsburgh and competed on “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” For those unfamiliar, “After Midnight” is CBS’s relatively new, lower-budget replacement for “The Late Late Show with James Corden.” (“After Midnight” launched in January and has been renewed for the 2024-25 TV season.
) Comedian Taylor Tomlinson hosts “After Midnight,” which includes Stephen Colbert among its executive producers. Each episode features a panel of three entertainers who compete for points as they try to win a prize. In reality, the competition is just a pretense for comedic answers and guest interplay.
In the episode I attended, the prize was a pair of pink shorts with the brand name Juicy misspelled Joosi. “After Midnight” films on Stage 29 of the Paramount Pictures lot, a small stage tucked in the venerable studio’s northwestmost corner. The audience numbers less than 100 spectators.
Like most taped-in-front-of-a-studio-audience shows, “After Midnight” has a warm-up performer. For this one, it’s Percy Rustomji , a comic actor whose credits include “The Kids Tonight Show” and guest spots on “The Goldbergs” and “Raven’s Home.” At the taping, he also claimed he played “a gay fork on ‘Beauty and the Beast’ on Broadway.
” Rustomji interacts with the audience, encouraging individuals and pairs to come on stage and dance with him as production assistants scurry about as the clock ticks down to showtime. Just before Tomlinson arrives to greet the crowd, Rustomji splits his pants. “You can borrow some of mine,” Tomlinson tells him.
“I have a lot upstairs. That was not a bit. Percy works hard.
” It turned out his hard work had just begun. The audience is encouraged to cheer as Tomlinson tapes an “After Midnight” promo that will air during Colbert’s “Late Show.” Before she does that, a makeup team rushes over to touch up Tomlinson’s face.
“I can’t be ugly on TV because I’m a woman and it’ll end my career,” Tomlinson deadpans. The show begins with Tomlinson’s monologue that’s often based on some internet trend. On the July 17 episode I attended, Tomlinson gave her response to “underconsumption core,” where people make their own shampoo and decorate their homes only with used furniture.
“All the décor I see these days looks like the same HGTV cookie cutter template,” Tomlinson says. “Until we stop outfitting new houses with ‘farmhouse accents,’ I will kill one Property Brother every hour. I’m just saying, twins are the definition of overconsumption.
” She stumbles on the word “accents” and has to back up and start over from the point where the show came back to the studio after a video clip. The “After Midnight” taping runs pretty smoothly for the first few segments with Rustomji returning to the stage to entertain during breaks where the commercials will go when the episode airs. But during one of the breaks, Jacobs, Alaska and the third panelist, comedian Chris Fleming , walk off the stage.
At first it’s unclear why and then I notice their names and scores have disappeared from their podiums, replaced by what looks like technical specs on one and the Microsoft Windows logo on another. Uh-oh, technical difficulties. Poor Rustomji vamps to keep the audience entertained, inviting couples to the stage to dance, quizzing a couple on how they met and instigating still more dancing.
Turns out it takes the computers seven minutes to reboot and they wind up being rebooted multiple times. The taping of a show that runs an hour on TV (including commercials) winds up stretching to 90 minutes. When one watches “After Midnight,” it appears that the panelists come up with their own answers to the questions but in the studio an audience member can turn around and see the answers scroll by on TelePrompTers.
It’s unclear if the panelists come up with the answers themselves earlier or if the show’s writing staff collaborates with each panelist on the answers they’ll give on the show. Fleming, the comedian, goes more off-script than the others, particularly during a segment called “Roast This Normal Guy” with Normal Guy played by one of the show’s writers. Fleming’s roast, spoken in the style of Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs,” begins by following what’s scripted on the prompter but then he starts riffing off-script.
The prompter keeps going and then has to scroll back up to return to where Fleming deviated from his pre-planned roast. After the taping ends around 5:30 p.m.
PT, the celebrity panelists exit the soundstage and one-by-one climb into the three chartered black SUVs that will ferry them home..
