Episode 199 - Peter Keleghan Interview

Now, before we get into your scenes, there's a ton of behind the scenes trivia to go over for this episode.

We know from the DVDs that certain elements of the script actually depended on the results of the mayoral election that was going on in New York at the time.

So can you take us through what that meant from a production standpoint in terms of how it affected the filming schedule, the script and just the overall process of putting the episode together that week?

Yeah, I mean, it was pretty amazing because, you know, it was decades ago and there wasn't, you know, the internet the way that we know it now where you can get a crystal clear image instantaneously with little or no effort.

It was back at a time where you had to have a satellite feed and it had to be set up, et cetera, et cetera.

So the process was that it was a mayor's race against Giuliani and Dinkins.

And it was, I was to be either Dinkins or Giuliani's, um, nemesis or, or, or the person that brought the, the, the character that didn't or the, the mayor that didn't win the elections, bad idea forward.

So in other words, we did two versions of every one where I was Dinkins or I was Giuliani's assistant that brought together, that brought them the harebrained idea to put name, name tags on everybody.

And so, um, we did, we did both versions of the, of, of the, um, you know, whenever there was a, you know, mentioning the name that I'm Dinkins assistant, or, you know, we'd always have to shoot those scenes two ways.

And then it was agreed that Dinkins or, and or, or Giuliani would on a Thursday morning, because the show taped on a Wednesday and the mayor's election, sorry, the show aired on a, on a Thursday, we had taped the whole thing by Wednesday and by on Thursday morning, uh, Giuliani and Dinkins agreed that they would satellite a little feed of however long it was 30 seconds a minute saying that they're going to take care of the scourge of this nonfat yogurt, which was pretty amazing for the time.

And it happened, you know, I mean, it was such a popular show that, that, that, yeah, both of those guys wanted to be on it.

And, uh, so that's, that's how that happened.

And then sure enough on, on Thursday night, There was, I guess it was Giuliani saying, you know, because I lost the mayor's race for Dinkins.

There was Giuliani saying, we're going to take care of this scourge of nonfat yogurt.

Yeah, and it's interesting because just to give you a little bit more information about that, because I was like really looking into the bonus features on the DVDs for this episode just to understand all the behind the scenes stuff that was going on.

And they were actually getting a lot of resistance from the Dinkins camp in terms of a commitment.

Yeah.

But Giuliani was in from day one because he was a big Seinfeld fan.

I didn't

know that.

That's interesting.

So if it happened the other way, we would have had some trouble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the cast and crew joke that they all became Republicans that week because they knew Giuliani would be in the episode.