Actor and comedian David Spade will host a late night talk show on Comedy Central. The 54-year-old one-time star of SNL has spent years doing everything from stand-up to raunchy comedies to successful TV sitcoms, and has forged strong ties with some of Hollywood’s biggest comedic names like Adam Sandler, Chris Rock and Kevin James, along the way.
Spade became particularly well known during the 1990s, alongside fellow SNL alum Chris Farley. Though most popular on SNL for his Hollywood Minute segment during the show’s Weekend Update, it was the comedic duo that Spade helped to create with Farley that took the pair from television to the movies. Together, Spade was the straight man to Farley’s bumbling, high-energy fool. The pair made two moderately successful cult-comedies together – 1995’s Tommy Boy and 1996’s Black Sheep - before Farley tragically passed away in 1997.
Since that time, DSpade’s career has remained more or less connected to his old SNL pals, but his latest venture will be a substantial change of pace. According to Variety, Spade will be producing and hosting his own late-night talk show for Comedy Central, which will feature a variety of celebrities and comedians taking on the “pop culture news of today”. The series, which as of this writing is yet to be named, will follow The Daily Show.
Taking on a late-night show is a big step not just for Spade - whose sole experience as the host of a talk show was three short seasons on Comedy Central’s The Showbiz Show With David Spade – but also for Comedy Central. The network is taking a gamble, with Spade’s new late-night show the first show to follow The Daily Show and to not deliberately focus on politics. What’s more, Spade’s new time slot will place him in direct competition with the current giants of American late night television: Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel. And as it currently stands, political issues seem to be comedy gold. It’s a challenge, to say the least, but one which Comedy Central and Spade are feeling up for.
Though Spade has remained something of a constant on the peripheries of comedy, it’s hard to see him succeeding with a late night show at this point in his career. The world is a much different place today than it was when Spade was cracking up audiences with catty take downs of celebrity culture. Today’s world is focused on politics and global matters, hence why so much of comedy is aimed at finding some sort of relief or silver lining in news that’s often so gloomy. Then again, TV audiences may be ready for an alternative to the nightly abundance of political comedy and commentary. If that’s the case, then the time just might be right for something new, with David Spade at the helm.
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Source: Variety
