Mostly, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" is about David Letterman's beard. The bushy protuberance is a 6- to 8-inch addition to Letterman's face, and it seems to be the threshold between the host of "The Late Show" (who retired in 2015) and the roving, eccentric interviewer he has since become. Letterman's CBS persona had no room for a beard, and whatever the beard might represent.
His Netflix persona has so much facial hair that it's a talking point. President Barack Obama jokes about it, as does Letterman's second interviewee, George Clooney; Letterman pokes fun at it while at home with Clooney's parents in Augusta, Kentucky. (I don't yet know if Malala Yousafzai, his guest for the third episode airing in March, has the same sense of humor, but I wouldn't be surprised.) It's as if the beard is a wardrobe change, an icebreaker, and the elephant in the room—it's a no-brainer. To observe the beard is to observe that Letterman, in 2018, has changed.
Creator: David Letterman
Stars: David Letterman, Kim Kardashian, George Clooney
“My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” will premiere new one-hour episodes monthly, starting with this morning’s premiere episode, which features Letterman’s interview with former President Obama. (Upcoming episodes will feature appearances by Yousafzai, Tina Fey, Jay-Z, and Howard Stern.) It’s a major achievement for the show, and for Netflix, to have landed Obama’s first talk-show interview since he left office. It’s also a very high bar for the first episode of a new series; Obama is such an unusual and singular interview subject. But at least a few things are immediately apparent.
First, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” is stretching itself: a one-hour episode means a lot of face time with a guest, even if the interviews are interrupted by produced segments. Second, Letterman’s Netflix series is almost entirely about private citizens acting for the public good. His emphasis in speaking with Obama isn't so much on the scope of public office as on how change, of any kind, eventually emerges from the actions of interested individuals. Clooney's episode, otherwise a classic Hollywood profile, takes a surprising turn when Letterman visits his hometown and meets the young, sincere Iraqi refugee they helped resettle.
And perhaps most importantly, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" is Letterman's repudiation of Trumpism, in the form he's most comfortable with, in a medium he's arguably a master of. To be sure, it's hard to do anything remotely noble other than repudiate Trump; that bar is very low, and getting lower all the time. But Letterman pulls no punches, especially in the first episode: the episode draws a contrast between the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the march from Selma, Georgia, to Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965.
Obama doesn't get drawn into the discussion about Trumpism that Letterman clearly hoped to have, but he is more willing to address the momentous significance of the march. Letterman's interview with Obama is interspersed with segments in which he crosses the Edmund Pettus Bridge with Congressman John Lewis, and while Obama declined to discuss Trump, Lewis is certainly willing to. Reading between the lines in both his introductions and appearances, Letterman on his new show has assembled a cast of humanities that Donald Trump and his administration routinely try to undermine, dismiss, or disenfranchise: refugees, Black men, outspoken women, and Howard Stern.
The format has its drawbacks. Letterman's access still has limits, and celebrity guests ensure that the interviews retain some of the sweetness of network television. It seems very likely that there will be thorny topics that his high-profile guests will dismiss, and the fact that the episodes were recorded last fall means that the questions can feel a little stale. It was surprising to see that Clooney's episode didn't mention the #MeToo movement, for example, and that this one doesn't air until February. And the length of the episodes isn't entirely justified by the material, which is sincere but not necessarily groundbreaking.
With so many podcasts and talk shows available, it's hard to justify another talk show; but then again, the appeal of "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" isn't that they're interviews, but that Letterman and his individual leads will engage viewers. Letterman fans might miss his more off-the-wall bits (sadly, nothing is ad-libbed), and there's a limit to how many times rich people can joke about their inability to use their free time.
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