Can You Make it Through This Cringeworthy Interview with Jerry Lewis?
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Thea Glassman December 20, 2016
To say that Jerry Lewis and reporter Andy Lewis didn’t hit it off would be an understatement.
For seven cringeworthy minutes, the interviewer asked the actor questions about his career for The Hollywood Reporter’s feature “Creative Until You Die,” a series of interviews with working actors in the 90’s and up age bracket.
“Throughout the photo shoot, Lewis complained about the amount of equipment in the house, the number of assistants and how the shots were set up,” Andy Lewis wrote in a piece that accompanied the video. “By the time we sat down for the interview about an hour later, Lewis had worked up a full of head of steam, and it seemed like he was punishing THR by doing the interview by being as uncooperative as possible.”
By “punishing,” the reporter means that the 90-year-old Lewis refused to give more than a terse, three word answer for each question. Watch below, and prepare yourself for quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable celebrity interviews of all time.
7 painfully awkward minutes with (famously difficult) comedian Jerry Lewis https://t.co/FY54ztjrKz pic.twitter.com/0hfVJ5DaLp
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) December 19, 2016
Thea Glassman is an Associate Editor at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @theakglassman.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
