TVSquad

It would seem that sooner or later everyone in show business will get a shot at a talk show. After all, if Rachael Ray can win an Emmy as a talk show host, and a one-time respected anchorman like Maury Povich can have 20 years of syndicated talk success, why not give every Tom, Dick, and Megan Mullally a chance.

NBC reportedly thinks Piers Morgan could be the next big thing in talk. The bitter Brit, a personality as caustic as Simon Cowell, was the winner of The Celebrity Apprentice and is the nastiest judge on America's Got Talent. Morgan has a two-year deal with ITV and is on the verge of inking a similar contract with NBC. The idea is that he could be the next David Frost.

OK, this isn't exactly "Who Shot JR," but it does have people guessing.

NBC Nightly News will have a new announcer starting tonight (longtime announcer Howard Reig retired in 2005), and they're trying to make it a surprise. The only clues from the network is that it's a name we all know, and this person had "an extensive, award-winning theatrical career for nearly forty years." Some of the guesses from fans include James Earl Jones, Patrick Stewart, James Lipton, Morgan Freeman, and ... Tom Brokaw? Yes, he was great in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Chris Rock will appear on tonight's episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, hosted by the windy but still humorously self-deprecating James Lipton. The two-hour episode, like all episodes of Inside the Actor's Studio, will delve into Chris' childhood, his hopes, his dreams, and what his favorite swear word is.

I must say, I've lost my affinity for Inside the Actor's Studio over the years. I could get past Lipton making every person who graced his stage seem like THE GREATEST ACTOR OF ALL TIME, but now I just find it annoying. I'm sure this episode won't be much different, and it will test my endurance as to whether I can stomach Lipton long enough to listen to an actor and comedian I really admire. I found myself faced with a similar dilemma when Robin Williams was on Sitdown Comedy with David Steinberg: I made it about one minute into the interview before I had to turn it off.

The episode airs tonight on Bravo at 8:00 p.m.

Starting tomorrow evening, Bravo's Inside the Actors Studio will celebrate Black History Month with repeats of episodes featuring Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Dave Chappelle, Jamie Foxx, Forrest Whitaker and Queen Latifah. On February 19 at 8 p.m., a new two-hour episode will feature Diana Ross in an exclusive interview with host James Lipton. Ross will also perform some of her songs during the episode. The schedule is below:

• Eddie Murphy: February 5 at 7 p.m.
• Will Smith: February 11 at 2 p.m.
• Dave Chappelle: February 12 at 6 p.m.
• Jamie Foxx: February 12 at 8 p.m.
• Diana Ross: February 19 at 8 p.m.
• Forrest Whitaker: February 20 at 4 p.m.
• Queen Latifah: February 26 at 9 a.m.

What can you say about Inside the Actor's Studio that hasn't already been said by a hundred parodies and humorists' impersonations? It will always be galling to hear hack actors talk about their "craft" and to hear James Lipton wax poetic about the farcial tour de force that is Half-Baked.

The show, however, is inspired precisely because it doesn't make the distinction between "movie stars" and "actors" in the way that most viewers do. It's like Charlie Rose meets Entertainment Weekly - celebrity journalism that aims for something higher.

Inside the Actor's Studio returns to Bravo for a new season on December 18th. In this outing of the 12-time Emmy-nominated series, James Lipton sits down with Eddie Murphy, Matt Damon, Forest Whitaker and Kyra Sedgwick. You can almost hear Lipton's careful intonation, "And, then, you turned your attention to outer space - from fat suit to space suit - with The Adventures of Pluto Nash."

Earlier this week we told you that actress Jane Wyatt had passed away at the age of 96, and now Time magazine's Richard Corliss writes a beautiful, long appreciation of the actress.

Most TV fans only seem to think of her as the mom on Father Knows Best, and even then, as Corliss points out, many of them are confusing her with the actress who married Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyman. But she had an amazing depth to her body of work that not only spanned several decades in the movies, but an impressive stage resume as welll, including Clifford Odets' Night Music, Dinner At Eight, The Fatal Alibi (from Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Lillian Hellman's The Autumn Garden, where her costar was James Lipton from Inside The Actor's Studio(!)

But this isn't just a rattling off of her credits. Corliss had a personal connection to Wyatt after meeting her in 1987, where they got into a discussion of politics and race. It's well worth reading.

Isn't it just about time that James Lipton and Bravo put Inside the Actor's Studio to rest? The roster of guests for the show is starting to get just a bit silly. For every quality actor like a Dustin Hoffman, who did the show for the first time this year, there seems to be about four guests who have a questionable connection to acting, like Martin Lawerence and Barbara Walters. Even the episode with Dave Chappelle, while it was entertaining, was nothing more than an examination of why he flipped out and left Chappelle's Show. I'm not really sure what the students who actually take this as a for-credit class are learning from these subjects.

Which brings me to the news that Teri Hatcher will appear on the show on September 18. Yes... Teri Hatcher. Yeah, she's an actress, so I'm sure she'll have something to teach the students in the audience. But, just reading the press release on the show, it seems like Lipton's going to ask her just as much about the non-acting, near-tabloidy aspects of her career than how she motivated herself to say "They're real, and they're spectacular!" I agree with Whitney Matheson, who first linked to the press release: they've officially run out of guests.

Dave Chappelle has been given plenty of opportunities to tell the American public why he walked out on the third season of Chappelle's Show and his $50 million contract. We've seen him on Oprah. He's talked to James Lipton for two full hours. He even had a chance to tell all in a lengthy article in Esquire. But in every case, he gave a different reason why he bolted, from Comedy Central imparting too much control on his show to feeling like he's out of place as a black comedian in a largely white entertainment world. He even cited a particular incident where he got freaked out by someone laughing a little too much at a skit he was filming right before he bolted.

He wasn't any clearer about the matter last night on Late Night, either. Once Conan O'Brien broached the subject, Dave started what I'm sure is a prepared comedy routine about the topic, making jokes about how upset his wife still is over him walking away from the money, as well as jokes about how silly his problems seemed in comparison to those of people he encountered in Africa.

[Photo: Dana Edelson/NBC, via AP]

Which of these things is not like the other: Al Pacino, Don Cheadle, Robert Downey, Jr., Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, and... Tim Allen? Bravo is touting all of these actors' upcoming appearances with James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio (a title that is screaming for an apostrophe!). Hanks will be the first actor to make a second appearance in the Studio, while Dustin Hoffman will be the Studio's 200th celebrity guest. No air dates are set, but the network says they'll appear this spring.

While most of the names are impressive, they might also be a bit boring. My favorite guest was Mike Myers, who did all sorts of voices and had some fun at Lipton's expense.

Who would you like to see Inside the Actors Studio?

NBC Universal continues to believe in the power of iTunes by putting some of Bravo's most popular programming on the web. Starting on February 28th, you will be able to download this entire season of Project Runway episodes, plus you can see the reunion special before it even airs. iTunes will also have the most popular episodes of Inside the Actor's Studio, including the recent episode with Dave Chappelle and big-time actors like Angelina Jolie and Michael J. Fox. As usual, each episode is $1.99.

What the heck has happened to Inside The Actor's Studio? It used to be the place to go to see James Lipton attach his lips to the buttcheeks of the greatest actors alive today. But, I'm guessing they've run out of high-status actors to beg (Al Pacino is one of the last biggies, and he'll be on later this year), since this year's lineup has been brutal. Elton John? Barbara Walters? Rosie O'Donnell? Martin Lawrence? What do any of these people have to do with acting?

This week's guest, Dave Chappelle, is also along those lines: another person not primarily known for acting. But given his disappearance, his reappearance, and his paranoid and incoherent appearance on Oprah, this interview is intriguing. I mean, think about it: James Lipton, perhaps the polar opposite of Chappelle as far as... well... everything is concerned, trying to figure out why Dave flew the coop, and also going wild over his powerful turn in Half-Baked. The unintentional comedy factor alone would make me want to watch. But Dave lets go some insights, as well, as this New York Times review details. So, it's going to be funny, unintentionally funny, and have some insight. Which is more than I'm going to say for the Al Pacino episode.