Inside Scoop: Neil Patrick Harris Talks BEST TIME EVER

Tonight is the premiere of Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris, a new comedy that wants you to expect the unexpected. OHSOGRAY was on hand for NBC’s presentation at the Television Critics Association summer gathering, where Harris and show producer Siobhan Greene previewed what viewers can look forward to.

Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC and premieres tonight.

Are you going to be incorporating pre-taped things into live things? How is it all going to work?

Neil Patrick Harris: Yeah, everyone’s been asking for some kind of pilot or some kind of sizzle reel or something to visually explain what the show is like, but the show is going to be live. So the first time anyone is going to see it in its entirety will be all of us together at the same time on the 15th of September. So we had me go to the U.K. I was a guest announcer for the “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway,” which is what the show is based off of. So we’re using a little bit of footage from them to give you an idea of what kind of things you’ll have in store for you. Then I did some wraparounds for it. We filmed some promo stuff.

Will it look very much like the overseas version?

Neil Patrick Harris: I think we have a new set, a new look. I’m not two people, contrary to popular opinion. So I’ll have a sidekick instead of a partner. And but yeah, a lot of segments[…] Siobhan Greene was with the “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway” from the very beginning. So they’re in their 12th series now. They just won two BAFTAs back-to-back. And that show is very strong. She has 12 years of knowledge and was willing to help us and come and be a part of the sort of U.S. version of that. That was incredibly important to me because this is a new structure and kind of a new idea for a show, and it’s a little bit difficult to explain in many ways. But you need to have the bible, someone who knows and has tested all of these things. So I don’t want to put a show out live with brand new, untested material because I think an audience deserves to actually be entertained as opposed to be sort of a litmus test for entertainment.

What do you take away from sort of the swift failure of “Knock Knock: Live” on Fox, which has similar elements in terms of how it interacts with America. Did you watch what they did, and sort of what were the key takeaways of what not to do with your show?

Neil Patrick Harris: I didn’t even watch “Knock Knock: Live.” I didn’t even know that it was on. I don’t say that as some sort of backhanded anything. I really truly didn’t know that it was on and that it was happening. I think what they did was ambitious, but it’s a hard conceit to do those things as a new idea, again. I love variety, and I was interested in the notion that I can show people at home, or in an audience, cool, interesting things that are clever that you can set your remote down and watch. I love the magic. I love the circus. I love the juggling. I love stuff…singular talents. But there’s already those shows. They already exist. “America’s Got Talent” is doing better than ever. And it does that for the whole…that’s their whole show. And there are singing competition shows, and there’s dancing competition shows already. While I love that stuff, I didn’t think there was room in the world for another version of that. And then I saw footage. I was sent a full episode of the U.K. version, and I just loved it. It’s got pieces of all kinds of different amusements. They’re lovely guys. It’s all fun. It’s little segments.

Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris - Season 1

Every week is sort of different, kind of the same. There’s guest announcers who are celebrities that are a part of it. There’s little versions of them. There’s a little version of me. I just think it’s so fun to see what’s happening next. So you can include the magic. You include competition stunts. You can include an “end of the show” show where we finish with some big live thing that I’ve had to learn a special skill involving a bunch of people that do some cool thing. The guys did a big…had a giant band come on and play. Then they lined up, and they played the drums, and they had learned how to do the whole drumming each other and hitting the drumsticks and doing all that. I loved that. That would be so fun to do. We’re not doing that because they did it, but we’re going to do things like that. That’s my hope, is that you’ll get to see a bunch of cool shit. It will be live, so you’ll only really be able to reference it the next day after you’ve seen it.

Neil, when you’ve done live performance, either it’s been a one-off, like the Tonys or the Oscars for that night, or something structured, like “Hedwig.” Doing something like this, what is the pressure on you?

Neil Patrick Harris: It feels, to me, more pressure in anticipation because a lot of the reason why I think the show will be fun to watch is because you’re just kind of…it’s a blind commit in certain ways because we want to withhold…we don’t want to reveal every single thing and every single person because it’s less exciting that way. We’re holding a lot of cards close to our vest because that’s what’s going to make it fun to watch live. I really do think it will be fun and, I’m hoping, a little bit game changing. I also didn’t anticipate how much work went into the production of it. I should have talked to you more [Siobhan] because it’s essentially producing six or seven shows simultaneously because you have game show elements. You have people who are creating games, finding ideas, prizes. That whole thing happens.

Then you have the little NPH, who is going out on his own segments, and those are created. I’m going to be pranking celebrities, so we’re having to deal with the logistics of that and teams…we have people in the audience who are going to be in the audience and who will authentically not have any idea that they’re going to be a part of the show; and not only that, that they’ve been followed for weeks, if not months, by segment producers and hidden cameras and stuff to accomplish a task, whether it’s them interacting with a celebrity that they’ve loved or talking about a secret that they’ve had. These things are in motion right now. I went and photobombed a wedding, and the couple has no idea that they’re even going to be coming to the show. So what I think will be fun is when we get to clip that together. That’s going to be a fun little package of us going to and accomplishing all of these things for this couple. But what will be even more fun is, while we’re all watching it, seeing the picture in picture of the actual couple on stage realizing at the moment that this has happened, that this has been happening for so long.

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[For Siobhan Greene] You’ve had 12 years’ experience doing this. Can you relate any incidents that went very, very, very, very wrong?

Siobhan Greene: Oh, God. Well, even when it’s wrong, it’s right. I think that’s the thing about the show that you’ve got to embrace, the show being live. Actually, when things do go wrong, I think the audience will love it because they can appreciate it. They’re going to go with you because what we’re going to do. Why I’ve come here to do this and to do it with somebody so special like the whole time in the U.K. when we’ve ever come over to talk about making the show here, the first thing that everybody says is, “But Ant and Dec, who can do it here?” It was the first thing. The whole time it was always a stumbling block. And then when you have somebody like Neil, it’s unbelievably exciting because what you’re doing is you’re taking what I think is a Rolls-Royce of history and ideas and show and putting it with the best driver in the whole world who is going to be able to drive this as it should be driven. But it’s got to be new. I know we’ve got the history, but it’s got to be new. So in answer to your question, of course things are going to go wrong. But I believe that the audience…that’s partly why you watch it, because you slightly want to hold your breath and think, “Oh, God, what’s…” because that’s certainly when you’re in the gallery and the show is happening, your heart’s coming out of your booming chest, as it should. The viewers at home, I want them to feel that level of excitement because so often now nowadays people will TiVo stuff, and they just watch it. But this is a show, I promise you […] and you are going to have to watch this show live. [Neil] is in it, and it’s going to be like nothing you have ever seen. I’m telling you now it really is.

So nothing lethal or maiming has occurred?

Siobhan Greene: Something lethal? No, but we’ve got—

NBCUniversal Events - Season 2015

Neil Patrick Harris: Maiming? I want to hear a maiming story.

Siobhan Greene: We used to have an item, well, we used an item called “What’s Next?,” and it was putting Ant & Dec into a situation where they didn’t know what was coming up. They actually thought they were getting into a cave with real gorillas, and they weren’t real gorillas. They were absolutely bricking themselves. They weren’t. So that was the nearest. When you said “maiming,” that’s what came into me head. I mean…

Neil Patrick Harris: Absolutely bricking themselves.

Siobhan Greene: But no.

Neil Patrick Harris: I love that.

This is kind of a short run, isn’t it? Is there any particular reason for it? How many weeks are you doing?

Neil Patrick Harris: We’re doing eight weeks in a row.

Any reason? Did you have something else you had to do, or any reason you’re only doing eight weeks?

Neil Patrick Harris: No. I think something like this deserves to be a little bit of an event. I feel like when—if Cirque du Soleil came into town and planted at Santa Monica Pier and was there all year long, you’d be less inclined to want to go to the circus, you know? So you kind of want to see it when it’s on. Then that gives us time to walk away and look at those eight and see what worked and why and, if we’re lucky enough to do the second season, fix it and have people, hopefully, hungry for it.

Siobhan Greene: And it’s like eight…I would just say it’s like eight lifetimes. I think what you always want to do is you want to leave them wanting more. That’s what you want to do in show business. You want them to go…it’s eight one-hours of, I hope, absolute entertainment perfection where they’re going to be gagging for more at the end. I’m telling you now.

Neil, when you went to the U.K. and you guest hosted, give us an example of one or two things that you did?

Neil Patrick Harris: I was so interested in the structures of it and how it worked. I tell you I love…the two sort of tenets that I hold in my life most dear are creativity and authenticity. Like, I love when those two can combine. So I love creative stuff, and I love when people do interesting stuff. But in the non-scripted world, the authenticity element tends to sometimes be not real in reality TV. You have audiences that are encouraged to applaud wildly if they’re not feeling it. You have people who are asked to cry because they’re getting broken up on camera. I think we’re in a world where you’re not sure what’s real and what’s not. So I had a lot of questions for them about the authenticity of these people. Like when you go into the audience and pull someone up and they look surprised because they don’t realize that they’re…I kept saying, “Are they really surprised? Have they been briefed on this? Do they know what’s happening?” And they don’t know. We’re going out of our way to make sure that people don’t know things. The audience is a participant within the show. I’m not the host of this show to perform for an audience. I’m sort of the host of this show to show you, as an audience, these cool things that we’re doing, that we’ve done that you’re going to be a part of. So it’s more inclusive of the crowd. That impressed me, that it was so legitimate, that those reactions were real.

I also marveled at how they can get so much content in such a specific amount of time, because it’s—their show is 60 minutes of content in a 75-minute format, and so our show is a 60-minute format with, what, 42, 43 minutes of content. And we have a lot of stuff that we want to do. There’s a lot of segments within the show, and they’re all disparate, and they’re all kind of crazy and fun and great. But I don’t know what happens if the front half runs long, because we know every show ends with the “end of the show” show. We’re going to know that’s going to be four-and-a-half minutes. So we can’t make that any shorter. At a certain point they’d cut to the next show. But what they did is they have packages that are longer versions and shorter versions. That’s flying by the seat of your pants. I’ve gotten to do that a fair amount on awards shows in the past, just being back at the table with the producing gang, saying, “Why won’t they wrap it up? Why don’t they wrap it up?” And then suddenly you’re two-and-a-half minutes long, and you have to look at your bits and your jokes and eliminate them and do a straight read or make it faster. So that’s the fun, for me, of having it done live.

NBCUniversal Events - Season 2015

Neil, what have been the discussions with NBC about the future after you do the first eight?

Neil Patrick Harris: Yeah, we’ve had conversations about various options, but I think that will just depend on its success and what goes on. I signed up for it as a yearly thing, so at the very least I hope that there’s a Season 2 that would happen around the same time next year. But it was important for me to be able to do it as a chunk and then step back. I don’t want to oversaturate this idea by just continuing to do it and do it and do it. But at the same time, I don’t want to get ahead of myself and start looking at the future when we really, really have to focus on the present.

Ms. Greene, when you started the British version, were your hosts as comparably well known as Mr. Harris and, if not, did they become famous?

Siobhan Greene: Yeah, they were. They’d been stars for a long time as children, as child actors, and they’ve come up. But they were probably on a cusp of… I mean, Neil, he’s in this stratosphere of being famous, but they weren’t. But they were on the cusp of it. The show for them, I know, absolutely cemented. For them that was their piece where they could absolutely show who they were. So they’ve presented at the very, very big shows in the U.K., but this is their piece. It’s their absolute piece to showcase who they are and what they do. So basically, I think they grew up with the show. Funny enough, I was talking about this with somebody the other week, and they were about 26, you know, 12, 13 years ago now, so they’ve grown up and done this show. As they’ve got better and better, the show rested for a while, and came back. You can see how they have developed. We all grew up. We’ve all grown up together with the show. So as producers and as people who are present in the show, they’ve also absolutely evolved with it. I think it shows on screen.

Neil Patrick Harris: But you can still watch it and it still seems fresh.

Siobhan Greene: Other, yeah, definitely.

Neil Patrick Harris: I mean, saying the show is 12 years out, makes it…I don’t want it to seem like we’re dusting off some show.

Siobhan Greene: Absolutely not.

Neil Patrick Harris: It is a real fun experience. Like that’s what I’m trying to do. That’s what I think Bob Greenblatt has done so well, is take this live idea and make it a reason to actually sit and watch something, and that adds its own sort of spontaneity and uniqueness and view ability, which isn’t a word but probably should be.

[For Siobhan Greene] Can you talk a little bit about the advantages and disadvantages, if there are any, of coming in with somebody who’s already pretty completely established?

Siobhan Greene: Well, the advantages are they know what…they’re brilliant at what they’re doing, so you’ve got to have somebody very, very special who’s at the heart of this show. Because not only is it…obviously it’s about them first and foremost, but also this is a show that’s going to be about the viewers. It’s going to be about the people who are in this audience. But what I want everybody to know is if you’re sitting at home, there’s every chance, absolutely seriously, that you could be a part of this show that this show is going to reach out to absolutely everybody.

Neil Patrick Harris: Yeah. We have a segment called “Sing-along Live” in the show, so we’ll literally bring out a musical celebrity who will sing a song. But before then, we’ll throw to, as you saw, different people in their living rooms and they will be realizing that they’re actually on TV live, and so we have — I’m not supposed to say, Ricky Martin’s gonna be on the show and he’s going to sing “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” right? And everyone loves that song, so why don’t we sing along. And right in the middle of it, I’m going to get in trouble for saying that. Right in the middle of it, he’ll stop and I’ll throw to someone, and if they can complete the thing, they’ll win a thousand bucks and then we’ll head back to him and he’ll sing some more and we’ll throw to somebody else. So, yeah, that’s a good pitch. If you watch the show from home, you might win a thousand dollars.

Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris - Season 1

Neil, can you talk about your staffing on the show like the mechanics of how it worked? Did you go to traditional comedy writers?

Neil Patrick Harris: We kind of did all of the above. We have to write specific content for all of these different variables. So we have people that have been involved in the gaming world that have been involved in the live entertainment world. We have people that are involved in award show writing, in comedy writing so that it can all be effective for the segment itself and with an overall umbrella of having a similar sense of humor. I want this show to be filled with fun stuff, but I also want it to be clever and funny. I want as many demographics to like it as possible, but the demographic I’m most interested in in many ways is the Sarah Silverman, Louis C.K. kind of crowd. Like, I want them to think our show is fun and might be fun to play a part in. So, yeah, I guess that would be a difference from the U.K. version to the U.S. version. I’m trying to make sure we have an American sensibility and our own sense of humor level.

Ms. Greene, back in England have any of the unsuspecting participants that have been exposed live, have they surprisingly freaked out, like run away from the camera?

Siobhan Greene: I mean, in the moment everybody’s just shocked. You know, when it’s happening to you, you probably can’t believe it. It must be very surreal. But, no, everybody’s taking it, because there’s a decency of spirit with everything. So we’re never laughing at. We’re laughing with.

So nobody’s wet their pants or anything?

Neil Patrick Harris: No one’s wet their pants. Not yet. But that’s the important thing, I think. I’ve been very conscious in the live comedy that I’ve done to try and not be mean-spirited. I don’t think it’s fun in an award show environment especially to take someone who performed in a movie two years ago and now they’re…or on a TV show and now they’re sitting there dressed up, nervous whether they’re going to win or not, to sort of take potshots at them because they’re an easy target. So I want the audience to be a part of this show. I want the celebrities that are involved to enjoy the experience that we’re, yes, laughing with and enjoying it together. Because we have, like, big celebrity people that are going to be part of the show. And we have a guest announcer every week who will be in the back of the audience, in their own little booth, and they are the ones that do the throws to commercials and coming-up-nexts. And our first one is… she’s going to be great, and I’m not supposed to say who it is. But it rhymes with Peace Mithertroon.