Several
people that I interviewed during my entertainment writing and
celebrity interviewing heyday can be seen regularly on Me TV.
The
6 p.m. weeknight beat is patrolled by Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox
as California Highway Patrol motorcycle cops Ponch and Jon on CHiPs.
I
had the pleasure of interviewing Estrada and Wilcox in 1998 for the
occasion of their CHiPs '99
TV reunion movie. Estrada
kept calling me “pardner,” and Wilcox, a computer business mogul
at the time, invited me to his ranch in California, an invitation I
regrettably never had the opportunity to
take him up on.
At
9 p.m. on Saturdays, William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy explore space
while trying to keep the intergalactic peace as Kirk and Spock on
Star Trek.
I
interviewed Nimoy in 1997 for his participation in a series of radio
plays inspired by Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre
and spearheaded by John de Lancie (Q on Star Trek: The Next
Generation).
I
interviewed Shatner because he was hosting The
Sci-Fi Channel's remastered reruns of the show in 1998. It was
thrilling
to hear Captain Kirk/T.J. Hooker himself
tell me he needed my help in
getting the word out about his activities at the time. When I told
him he was really going where no man had gone before with his
Name in Space project, in which you could have your and your lover's
names orbit Earth alongside his name in a space capsule, he
exclaimed, “Isn't that wild?!”
On
Sundays at 6 p.m., you can
see James MacArthur (Helen Hayes' son) as Detective Danny “Danno”
Williams getting patched through to McGarrett (Jack Lord) on Hawaii
Five-O.
I
interviewed MacArthur in 1997 because The Family Channel was airing
remastered versions of the show. When I interviewed MacArthur, he was
in his home office in Palm Desert, California, looking at posters of
his films, such as Swiss Family Robinson.
MacArthur told me that in return for promoting the remastered shows,
rather than money, he
wanted The Family Channel to give him all the remastered episodes on
videotape so he could show them to his children and grandchildren.
This was just before the advent of DVDs. So MacArthur wasn't just one
of the stars of the show, he was also a fan!
It
was great to hear MacArthur not
only reminisce
about his career (including
working with his mother Helen Hayes, who guest-starred as Danno's
aunt in Hawaii Five-O),
but also recollect
the late, great Jack Lord. MacArthur himself passed away in 2010,
just as he was finalizing plans to guest star in the new Hawaii
Five-0 TV series. MacArthur
was living in Florida at the time.
Watch
people interviewed by me on Me TV.
--Raj
Manoharan
