Norm Macdonald on Donald Trump, failing ‘Jeopardy!’ and Trudeau-mania

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2016 (3658 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO – Standup star Norm Macdonald is famous for his rambling, circuitous delivery — a wry style that slowly builds to a sharp-edged punchline, rather than going for the quick joke. So it’s no surprise that a recent interview about the Canadian Screen Awards featured more than a few comical digressions.

On not getting his U.S. citizenship:

“I still have to renew my green card every 10 years. So I’m still a Canadian citizen.

“I just never thought of myself as American. And I don’t know, I’m probably just (too) lazy (to) go down and do that stupid citizenship test.”

Macdonald didn’t vote in Canada’s most recent federal election, saying he didn’t know enough about the issues. But if he had voted, he probably would have voted for “that sexy kid.”

“I grew up with Pierre Trudeau and I liked him and it was like Trudeau-mania back then, too. It’s a sexy legacy.”

———

On the possibility of a Donald Trump presidency:

“Nothing has hurt him at all. Candidates after candidates go after him and get crushed and then the press has sort of stepped back now. The press is sort of just laughing all the time, you know, you just keep laughing and then all of a sudden the guy’s the president.

“If he wins the nomination the base will be so electrified that I don’t see how he doesn’t steamroll over Hillary (Clinton). The Liberals wanted Donald Trump at first, now they might still want him, but I think they’re wrong because he’s just defied every expectation so why wouldn’t he continue?”

———

On playing Colonel Sanders in a series of KFC commercials:

“I love standup the most, I keep thinking I should just only do standup and just forget about everything else. But then someone offers some idea and then you work on it. It’s never as fun because there’s notes and people have different ideas and all that stuff.

“I wasn’t doing the KFC gig to be hysterically funny. I was just doing it because they asked me to and it didn’t take very long to do.

“But what’s funny is I do standup, you know, the guys would tell me, ‘We’re getting a lot of calls, people want to see the Colonel.’ And I’m like, ‘What? They’re going to a comedy club to see Colonel Sanders?’ So I don’t know if they expect me to dress as Colonel Sanders and talk about chicken or what, but it’s very odd.

“I’m still trying to figure out show business.”

———

On trying out for “Jeopardy!”:

“When I first went to America I didn’t have any money and I tried out for ‘Jeopardy!’ because I’m really good at trivia. So they take you to this room with other contestants and then I was beating everybody by a huge amount and then the guy — it’s just these segment producers asking questions and stuff — they stopped and they were asking me where I was from and I’m like, ‘I’m from Canada.’

“And then they’re like, ‘Oh, what are you doing here in the States?’ I’m like, ‘I’m just trying to do comedy. But anyways, let’s get back to the game.’

“I realized later that was the part of the test where they were seeing how entertaining you were just talking, you know. So I blew that part because I didn’t know. I was on a roll and I wanted to keep going so I wrecked it with the personality part of test.”