Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Inside Late Night: Nikki Nash

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

This week on LateNighter's Inside Late Night podcast, comedian, host of CNN's Have I Got News For You, and author of the new memoir The Man of Many Fathers, Roy Wood Jr. joins Mark Malkoff to talk late-night breaks, near-misses, and knowing when to walk away.Make sure to follow us on social media (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@latenightercom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠) and subscribe on all podcast platforms and YouTube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@latenightercom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to never miss an episode!

From Latenighter.com, it's Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Hey everybody, John Schneider, back here from Late Nighter, getting you set for today's conversation on Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. And today's guest is Veteran TV Associated. associate director, Nikki Nash, who joins Mark to talk about her 45 years behind the scenes in late night working on shows like Carson, Conan, the Chevy Chase Show, and Jimmy Kim Alive. She has a new book out now, Collateral Stardust, and here is our conversation with Mark and Nikki. Nikki Nash, nice to see you.

Great to be here. Thank you. So your book, Collateral Stardust, you name names, you were very vulnerable. You grew up in Tarzana, California in a very interesting time with show business. We're going to talk about everything. You mentioned several late-night hosts. You've worked on late-night shows. We're going to get to that.

I did want to ask you about working on the Oscars. You know, Johnny Carson hosted something like four or five times and is regarded as one of the greatest of all time. And you were working with the director, Marty Pissetta. Now, famously, Carson and Pissetta did not get along. I do write about this in my book in some depth, but the fact that you were actually there? What did you observe with their relationship? Well, I do remember another time when we did the Reagan inaugural and Bassetta was directing. And Johnny Carson was very clear with his PR people, never cut away from them. And it was a circular stage. So he kept turning to different parts.

And for whatever reason, Marty kept taking the back of his head. And what I remember was that the AD took the brunt of it and got fired for that. So it was. It was unfortunate, but on the show that we did with Carson, the time that Reagan was shot, that was just chaos because, you know, we were supposed to do the show. Back then it was a Monday night. And then Reagan was shot. And so it went back and forth with the, you know, the network, with Pissetta, with Carson, should we go ahead with the show? how can we push everybody to the next day, all the stars, all the arrivals, and we ended up pushing it a day. So, you know, we all just found amphetamine somewhere and made it happen. You're right about that in the book. Yeah, Marty Pissetta liked cutaways work. Johnny, when he was doing his monologue, he always, for the Oscars, or when he was doing the Reagan inaugural,

always wanted the camera on himself the entire time. Just so for the reaction, Justin case a joke didn't work that he could kind of say that just with his with his with his looks and I know um I go and also I mentioned a couple other things in the book why they didn't um see eye to eye but peseta um said in an interview that he said Carson was the most difficult os um Oscar host and I know that they just had different processes um you know just reading your your book it's unbelievable the lives number of lives you've lived um in addition you were at Conan for 12 years on the tonight show when he was there for not long and then as well the TBS run. What was that like

working at Conan show? Well, it's the best job I've ever had and after the tonight show ended and we went to TBS it still continued to be and we were like family. He was fantastic, a genius. The rehearsals

were usually much funnier than the show if that's possible just because he's so incredibly bright. And he'll just riff for five minutes pulling on everything from his education of the world. And we would just sit there in awe in the control room and watch these rehearsals. He was great. He was great.

And the Tonight Show is a tough time because, as you know what happened, things went south. And oddly enough, I think you probably know this from your book, that I think Johnny Carson offered the Tonight Show. to Gary Shandling first and who turned it down. I understand. Someone just told me this recently. So it's kind of a funny full circle that eventually Conan would do it to night show and it would be Gary Shandling that kind of picked up the pieces for him when he went to Hawaii. It was a hard time.

True. They were very close. Shanlin and Conan. Yeah, at one point they were going to pick the permanent guest host and it was down to because Carson didn't have the say of. who took over him on the Tonight Show. But it was down to Shanling and Leno. And Shanling just didn't want to do it yet.

He was committed to doing the Showtime show. So Jay took the gig. But yeah, Shanling was unbelievable. You also worked at least for a little bit on Jimmy Kimmel's show? Just, you know, I just filled in, which as an AD that's, you know, you just go in and you have to learn everything in about a day. So it was just a couple of weeks, but I did bring an aide to show you something that I thought you would get a pick out of.

So here it is. I've only shown this to one person, and that's you. Okay. I'm looking forward to this. We were going to get there. That's the Chevy Chase show. I was going to get there. Oh, I didn't mean to push you.

No, no, no, no. That's wonderful. No, I appreciate the visual. Oh, my goodness. I've seen a Chevy hat, but I didn't see the shirt. Now, I had the director on, was it, was it, um, was it Steve? Yeah, Steve Binder. Yeah, he was on my Carson podcast. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, he, Steve's great. Amazing career. What, what stands out about Chevy's show? I don't believe that they did test shows. They probably should have done test shows leading up. The first show was famously, um, it was really difficult. It did not turn out well. I think subsequently the show got a lot of, stronger as it went, but it really never, obviously you do less than 30 shows. You're not going to be able to find your group. But as a spectator, what did you witness? Oh, well, I'll just tell you this sort of behind the scenes thing that, you know, as you know, the first show, not great. I think, you know, Chevy, he was terrific to me. You know, we were friendly. And I think, you know,

from Saturday Live and everything, I think people were so in love with him that he thought, they could just run a five-minute funny bit of him doing something in the you know on the street by himself and then you've got another 40 minutes to fill so we had to start getting guests because we didn't record a lot of bits so I don't know maybe a week in the stage manager told me this he goes I think we're in trouble because we had a talk segment which was awkward he gets off stage and he says to Josh I hate that part where I have to talk to people that is the whole yeah interviewing guest is not easy i mean you have someone like letterman who guest hosted for johnny carson and had a morning show and he had that and it really um he needed that

practice where chevy he was so established and so famous that he they didn't have time to learn the skill set he guest hosted for johnny one time and said it was really difficult and i guess he blocked it out how how how hard it was you mentioned in the book that you dated a late night talk show host for a little bit. You met on the Smoky Robinson special. Who was that? And was that when he hosted his show? No, this was way before he was anything. But we were doing the Smoky Robinson show and he was doing bits on it. His name was Arsenio, Arsenio Hall. We used to hang out late at night doing all the editing, which took, you know, hours and hours. And we would just get so tired of things we'd hang out on the floor while the producers were editing. And he was hilarious. He was great.

And so, you know, we went out for a while and had a great time. I think it's tough. I mean, it wouldn't have lasted. But I think also because I tend to see humor and things, I'm not always the best person today to comic because I think they want someone to set them up, not to banter along with them. But he was fantastic. I saw him years later when he was doing a show and I don't know,

someone was on it. So I went back and said hello. But yeah. before the time that he was Arsenio Hall That's so interesting Yeah he has so much charisma As a host

And I mean he when he first started that show The first two years or so Absolutely enormous I'm getting back to Conan What was it like in the control room On the final tonight show You have Neil Young playing Long May you run

And Will Ferrell with Free Bird What was that occasion like That final show it was it was painful it was very hard all of us were very close conan was a great boss and it was hard and sad i mean all of us could empathize with uh conan because we knew of his love of johnny carson and he finally got there and there's no there to get after johnny carson i mean that was a bunch of elements and zeitgeist of the time and conan is a different person and And, you know, we all felt for him because that was his dream, you know, going up and smoke.

And for all of us, I mean, it was secondary to wonder, you know, about our jobs or what would happen next. And I have to tell you, I mean, I get chills thinking about this. Conan, the other AD with me had been with Conan like 20 years or whatever, came out through New York. And Conan's producer was calling people in to just talk. about little severance pay things and everything. And I'm saying, Billy, I hope they take care of you. God, you're so great. You've been with him forever.

I mean, I've been with him six months. I didn't expect anything. So Billy comes back and he was blown away. It's like he was paying him four months salary or something. And I'm like, God, Conan is so, you did that with everybody. I get called in and I was offered the same thing. And I said, Conan, I've only been here like six months. And, you know, he said, well, but I've known you since, you know, the 80s, which I did because of not necessarily the news.

He was one of the first writers. So all of us were just always blown away at his generosity. Sometimes he calls it Irish guilt, but he is such a caring person. And he took care. I mean, 180 people on the staff and crew were fine for like four or five months. And then he got another gig. There was one point where he fell during the taping and they had to stop the taping and they had to, you know, went to the hospital and it wasn't aired, it was a canceled taping, extremely rare.

What were some other times that you recall where they actually had to stop taping or something didn't air during those 12 years working for Conan's show? Very rarely, the Terry Hatcher thing that you mentioned, it was probably the scariest because they had wet him down after a pre-taped that involved a swimming pool. And so the art director got him all wet and they ran down the stairs and I'm sure you know slipped. And just one point on that, he was such a professional. I don't know, he might still have a concussion seeing stars. Somehow he said, well, Terry Hatchy, you're the winner. He got to the desk. He said, we'll be right back after this. He has no memory of any of that. And yes,

he went to the hospital. So it was the show didn't air. But, I mean, constant professional, as they say, he was able to finish the segment. I think another time, you know, he's game for anything. And it's not always thought out. And I think we had a big bison or big something. And someone said, you know, it was rehearsal. So, well, get on it. Well, that was not the best idea because, you know, the bison was not too happy to be there. The floor was slippery. And he took another fall. And I think he heard his hip. But, you know, he was game. He did all these stunts with Stephen Ho who did all the stuff through glass. It was, you know, just like a stuntman. And It was very impressive.

The Chevy Chase show, did they have a rap party? That's good question. I'll tell you this. I think maybe a week before it was canceled. And I talked to Chevy, came into the booth a few times, and I knew he was struggling with his back trouble and took some pain medication. There'd been talk about him trying to get sober,

so I knew I wasn't, you know, talking out of school. But I said, Chevy, just so you know, there are about eight of us on the show that don't drink anymore, and we meet every Thursday, if that's something you'd be interested in. And he said, yeah, I would. I didn't tell who else was sober, but, and then he sent me flowers, and he said, don't worry, this will be over soon, meeting the show. And I'm like, I didn't tell anyone, but it was the strangest thing.

So Friday, we finished the week. go home and then Monday they tell us not to come in and we never saw anybody again it was just one of those things that's really sad how long were you in living color uh just you know again I filled on in for a few weeks and that was an amazing cast and just such a lively bunch those shows are very hard to make work but I mean that show longevity people still talk about it. One person who's extremely talented, who did very well guest hosting for Letterman that got their own show that wasn't able to get past a season, and it's not a representation of her talent is Megan Malali. You worked on the Megan Malawi show, correct? Yes. Man, you're digging

deep there. Megan Malali, yeah, she was great. We have the same birthday, which matters to nobody, but I'll mention it. And yeah, we were on her talk show, and no one asked me, but I think it might have been more fun if she had done the talk show as her Karen character. It would have been pretty snarky and fun. That was tough because I think she's just beautiful and hilarious and also very comes in from the side. So she's not easy to kind of rain in. She doesn't want to do all the usual stuff. So that was another show that was sort of surprisingly canceled. It just, I don't think they had really built it around what her strengths were. And maybe it was a bit of the Chevy thing of thinking it was just going to be easier than you just show up and that's enough.

Those shows are a grind. They're extremely hard. When you were taking classes at the ground lanes, two people that you took classes with have become, became very famous. Was it clear? and we'll get to who those two people were. But at the time, if you had to guess the two breakouts, would it have been these two people and who were they? It would have been one of them. It would have been Brian Pranston. He came in for sort of a sprucing up class.

And he was so charming and so open. You just, you know, he had that kind of Bill Clinton thing where you just felt he was only seeing you and talking to you. But he was so quick, so bright. And, you know, he just got on stage and would do a bit. And you just knew he was just great. I, of course, was horrible at improv because I'm a very private person. And I wasn't very generous at the time.

So I didn't want to give the floor to anyone. The other person was Adam Carolla. We were partnered up for some scene in a car sitting in the folding chairs and doing something. And I don't remember the bits that much. He seemed kind of flaky. We ended up dating because I like to date flaky people, apparently. And then I, you know, we went our separate ways. He became huge.

And then he had a talk show of his own, which I ended up A-Ding on. So another full circle of this strange life in TV. Yeah, it seems like you've worked with everyone. I want people to buy your book collateral startup. So I'm not going to mention who this person is, but you do talk about a former Saturday Night Live cast member who had a show who you mentioned was extremely difficult. You said the first day of rehearsals fired the stage manager

just because the stage manager might have, I gave him the wrong look or just wasn't comfortable. But there was, I've heard from a bunch of different people, this person, unfortunately, is difficult, has been very difficult. And I want people to buy the book, but what was it like working on this show? And how would you describe this person's behavior?

Well, since we're not mentioning his name, although he's named in the book, he was, he was those things. He was difficult. There was one time, this is not the silly time I brought the coat out, but there was one time where he had a guest on, He was pretty far right at this point.

It was his rant shows, screeds. He, you know, trashed everything and just went on, and on his little rants. This particular time, we had a setup much like yours and mine. We had a guest coming in on satellite. And because of the guy's location, he couldn't see us. We wouldn't have time to set up a monitor to see Dennis. But Dennis could see him.

We had the split screen. We gave it away. but hey, that's all good. We give it the first person. It's all good. That's all right. Well, I just wanted people to buy your book. Oh, you're so sweet.

You mentioned his first name, Dennis. I'm trying to think who that might be. Dennis, Dennis the Menace, I think, perhaps. But anyway, that's his alienist. His name was really, John. He's your producer now. So, no. So this person is on the screen and the host,

well, who will call Dennis? Dennis, didn't like what this guy was saying. It was like one of the first left-leaning people guests we had. And I swear, it was like something out of Grey Gardens because Dennis had a sweater on. And it was almost like the Chevy Chase thing. At one point, the guy is talking about something, trying to have an intimate conversation about politics.

Dennis pulls his sweater up over his head and starts going, and we're in the booth. We're trying to cut a show. And now everything that he's done is unusable. So we had to finish it up. The poor guy, you know, Dennis just dumped him. And then we had to go back and find all the isolated cameras that had maybe Dennis from rehearsal or Dennis from earlier setting up the guy or whatever and just stay on the guy,

cut to Dennis looking normal, back to the guy. So it was, you know, there were times like that were difficult. Hey, it was his show. he could do whatever he wanted, so we just worked with it. You wrote, though, that people were afraid of the host. Yeah, yeah. He, I mean, we were all sort of told don't talk to him. And, you know, I'm kind of a wise ass sometimes,

and I've gotten along with, you know, a billion people on so many shows, and maybe I was pushing that little too far. But Dennis loved to complain, and the stage was always, Always freezing. So every day he'd be like, why is it so cold here? Does anyone hear this? Can someone help me? What is it? You know, what do you guys do? And it just laid into us about nobody doing anything. And I'm like this problem solver. So I'm looking at the back to the producers like, do you hear him? Maybe we should turn up the thermostat. And nothing happens. Everyone's afraid to do anything to make a change. And this goes on for a week. And finally, I was just tired of it. And I had a big coat on the back of my. chair for rain and so he goes it is you know how effing cold does it have to get before anyone does anything so I got up I grabbed my coat the door opened right to the stage I walked out there I walked behind him I put the coat around his shoulders you know padded him like they're there and went back in the booth and everyone was dead silent everyone was panicked they thought that's it

she's fired and I just sat down like okay and and then he said who was that? I mean, he didn't know what anyone did or where we came from. So he said, you know, don't ever send Mrs. Sonny Barger out again because, you know, he's a Hell's Angel guy and I have tattoos. So he just, so I became Mrs. Sunny Barger. And anytime anything went wrong on stage, he goes, whatever you do, don't send in Mrs. Sunny Barger. So I still, to this day, don't think he knows who I am. But I did see him on Megan Malalley and he was still afraid of me. to say you write about this in the book that this former Saturday Night Live cast member a talk show host you you you think it might go well that the show is no longer so you show up

to the dressing room and this person is with their manager and what happens well I really thought it was just a running joke um with this host and again maybe I crossed a boundary but I asked the stage manager first because you don't just go up to a guest they're in charge so he took me up and knocked on the door and said, you know, sir, there's someone to say hello. And I popped in and said, hi, it's Nikki, Mrs. Sunny Berger. And he went, oh, my God. And he ran into the bathroom, closed the door. And I thought, oh, this is a fun bit.

He never came out. He actually had no tools whatsoever to talk to me or I don't know what. His manager just kept eating, you know, at the snacks and whatever. So I was just mortified and more than anything. I really hope that this didn't cause him to say I'm not coming on the show, you know, because I didn't want to cross that line or screw up production. I mean, I wonder, I don't know, it's a mystery to me. Reading your book, I mean, it's an amazing life with just growing up as a kid.

You have people like Robert Altman showing up at parties with your family. Your dad was a musician. I forget what your mom did, but this very artsy family, your mom was having black panthers in the home back then at the height of the controversy. What was that like growing up during that time? Well, it was, you know, the 60s, the sexual revolution, the valley, everyone was political. And yeah, we had these parties that would start on Friday night and go till Monday morning. And just dancing and jazz jams and everyone would like come in from all parts of California.

for these parties and, you know, drinking and who knows what other shenanigans were going on. And then, you know, come Monday, it was like my mom would just retreat to a room. My dad would go back to work. And we're, you know, my brothers and I are like, what was that? You know, it just these tornadoes would come through every weekend. And yeah, I mean, the Black Panthers, my mom and I and Huey Newton went out drinking with his bodyguard. I was 14. You know, Hughie Newton was really handsome.

so I didn't mind at all. But, yeah, my dad liked to, you know, swim naked in front of guests. And it was a crazy childhood. And I think that's probably why I had a fixation on one of the people in the book. It was like I was alone. I needed something for myself, something that would promise love in the future, because I didn't feel it now. And so I, you know, I developed this obsession that kind of carried me through life.

Yes. You talk about it. You name names and the individual was Warren Beatty. And you were, I believe, 14 when you first got into Beatty. And you found out that he was living at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And you knew that he frequented a restaurant. So you actually got a job as a hostess. Yeah. I, you know, at 14, I saw splendor in the grass. And I just, I knew, oh, that is the person that is going to make life worth living. I'm going to meet him and he's going to be in my life forever. So at 14, I had three steps. One was to grow up because I knew I was still too young. Two was to meet him. And then three was to have him in my life for the rest of my life.

So, yeah, someone I knew from my brief moment in college was working at the old world restaurant in Beverly Hills and said, yeah, and people. come in, some famous people like Warren Beatty, I went, so I got a job there. And I worked there a year and a half, and he never showed up. I, it was just, you know, I was trying to be an actress and dating these, the waiters, and, you know, it was the time of poppers and kind of Studio 54 vibe. And, you know, I just kept waiting for Warren to come in. And he eventually did. And it's the day where you didn't make yourself up. I'm sure you look incredible, but you were mentioned and you weren't, it wasn't the time when you had yourself

all made up and it wasn't ideal, but you become friends with Warren Beatty. You know him, you date him. And this thing, I mean, you stayed in touch with him. I mean, in the book, this was for years and years. How did that progress? You know, I mean, I spoke to him last year, And what I've always said is, you know, thank you for always taking my calls because he always did. I don't know if it just kept showing up on his phone that it was me, but he was just so, whoops, sorry, so always gracious to me. But in the early days, I seemed to be the interstitial between women on movies that he was dating. So anytime he had downtime, you know, I would always call him.

And then we would go places that Playboy Mansion or we, you know, hang out at his place or go over to Jack Nicholson's and watch football. And, you know, and I just kind of rolled with it. It was, and then he would go away for a year and do a movie. And then I'd call him again. And in fact, at one point, my brother, who's this, you know, prodigy saxophone player, Warren was about to do having can wait. And he was talking about being nervous about the soprano saxophone that he had to play. So my brother is an amazing saxophone player. He can give you some lessons.

So I hooked them up and Ted went over there and showed him some fingering and all that. There were multiple times in the book where you mentioned you would have to tell Warren Beatty step being Warren Beatty. Can you explain what that meant? You know, it may have been, I think even writing the book, I couldn't write it until I was ready, which meant ready to drop some of the persona that. I carried around and tell some of these secrets. As you know, some of them are pretty revealing and some are painful, but they somehow have reconciled my parts. So I'm a much more open person, much happier. And so maybe I recognized this in him. Maybe five years ago, I went over to his house.

It was completely platonic. I mean, I think I was devastated when he got married, but then, you know, that was it. Okay, moving on. But then we did stay friends. So I went over just to hang out and I had a dying cat. I was trying to just have a normal conversation with them and kind of, kind of like just an old habit. You see somebody from 30 years ago and you fall into the same pattern. So, you know, he would ask me a question. So have you ever had a threesome? And I'm like, you ask me this every time, you know? And then he would come up with. with something else and I said, Lauren, I'm here, my cat is dying, there's nothing happening here.

Stop being all Warren Beatty. I don't, you don't need to do this. I'm happy to be here just sitting and talking. You don't have to bring on the charm or bring on the flirt, nothing's gonna happen. That was a billion years ago. So just stop it. Were those parties being at Jack Nicholson's

Mahalind Drive Mansion, Were they as glamorous as somebody would think or what stands out? Well, the parties themselves, I remember going to a party there, and what was, I was just kind of hanging out. I mean, I'm still like 23 and kind of dumbfounded that I went with Warren and I'm at this party. On the other hand, on the outside, I looked perfectly normal, so nobody questioned it. But the only member of about the big party was just the bowls of kind of cocaine, you know, like the mushroom hors d'oeuvres. And Warren was very healthy, never did drugs or drank. And I had not discovered the delights of cocaine yet.

So I just watched. I watched this go by. And, you know, I did go to a smaller dinner party at Jack's house. Warren was doing a movie, and I guess Jack wasn't, and I was sort of the fill-in girl. I didn't sleep with Jack, but he invited me to a dinner party, and I had recently had a scare skydiving, and so we're sitting at this table, and we said, well, Nikki, tell them about the skydiving. And so I launched into this long story about falling off the plane and tumbling down and

almost dying, and, you know, like a reconture, and I look around, and at the time, and at the table is, you know, Sean Connery and his wife, Michael Douglas and his wife, Michael Kane and his wife, like, yeah, of course, I'm going to just sit here and tell them this grand story about skydiving. They're all interested and oh my God, and you went back up and blah, blah, and it's just, you know, again, one of those out-of-my-body experiences in my life of just like, what is going on here, you know? So. It seems like you've met everyone. We'll get to some of the others, but did you ever meet John Belushi? No, I didn't. I didn't. Did you?

No, I never did. I, yeah. Too young? Yeah, I was too young. But, yeah, I just wasn't sure if that was maybe the same crowd. What was it like being in your pajamas watching football with Frank Sinatra and what were the circumstances? Well, that was another kind of out-of-body thing. I was from that Reagan inaugural where Carson was furious and Posetta posted on the AD, not me. I met the lighting guy for Sinatra, and we of course quickly became engaged because I guess that's what I did at the time. And he also did lighting for Anne Margaret and Frank Sinatra and was about to go on a tour with Frank Sinatra, which I ended up going on and helping the band.

with logistics and running the lighting board, meaning I just put the on and off switch up, but still. And then we were back in D.C., and I was working on probably the Kennedy Center monitors, and I think Sinatra had something in D.C. And so Bob and I, oh, Carl, pardon me. So Carl and I were in a hotel room, and next to us was Frank and Jilly.

So there's a knock on the door, and Carl and I always wore just night shirts and socks and, you know, drank a lot of martinis and then knock on the door and we opened it as Jilly. And Jilly is sort of Sinatra's maybe mafia sidekick. And he goes, Frank, want you to come over and watch football. And I'm like, Carl, we're in our pajamas. And Jilly, no, come on over. We don't care. So Carl and I and our socks and our martinis and our little night shirts pad down 10 feet go in there and Frank's got the table. snacks and we're watching football. And, you know, I knew enough about football to hold my own. So,

you know, Frank and I are battling about something. And again, it was one of those things like, yeah, of course. I'm just in my 20s sitting here with Frank and some mob guy and Carl watching Monday night football, you know. Chili Rizzo, it happened. It happened to you, Nikki. And then I did see, and I don't know, because the internet's not always accurate. I don't know if you know this. It did say that You worked on a Bob Hope All-Star Christmas special in 1978. Is that true? And if so, what stands out?

You have done your research. I did that. I did another show in Columbus, Ohio. And I'll tell you this about, and this goes to my usually getting along with people and sort of being a wise ass. We were, I think we're in Columbus. And Bob Hope was notorious for keeping his own hours. I mean, it's his show.

It's his life. we're working from, of course he can. But people warn me, you know, you might get called in the middle of the night to go run cue cards or something like that. And the PA, I was a script department then, and we were in a building that had shut down the elevators to 8 p.m. to save money and the AC. So all of us stay till midnight working on the script up and downstairs where the copy machine is. I mean, this is before, you know, of course, internet cell phones, any email, you just everything was by hand, print it, drive it to somebody. So we were exhausted. And it's almost the time of the show, the day of the show. And I'm in this crappy hotel. And at 4 in the morning, the phone rings.

And it's like, yeah, hey, it's blah, blah. Bob wants to run cards. And I said, you know, I'll be happy to run them at 7 o'clock. And they, okay, great. Well, we'll see you at 7. Bye. Bye. I mean, I just, I don't know what came over me, but I just was too tired. Why do we to do it at 4? the morning. So anyway. Yeah, that's, I'm sure that they're not used to that, but that's good that you put your foot down. I also wanted to mention when you were a teenager, you got to hang out with Anne Margaret, who went on a lot of the late night shows. There's a, with Johnny Carson quite a quite a bit. How old were you? When she was recording, was she recording a song? Oh, when I was probably eight years old, my dad was working with her on a record.

And he brought me there and we took a picture and I just love her so much. She's often in my dreams. But then Carl with Sinatra, we went to some of her shows and left to her hotel room. And I brought that picture for her to see when a little eight-year-old me was trying to be, you know, just as cute as she is, not pulling it off. And then she was actually on Lisa Gibbons show, which is a talk show I worked on in the 90s. And again, I asked a stage manager, went in, said, hi to Ann Margaret and just told her how much I loved her. She signed my dumb little picture of me when

I was eight. And I think, you know, I'm not big on autographs. I don't understand them. But that's the only one that I love. So she was great. Because yeah, back in the day, the autograph thing was what people weren't really doing the photos as much. But now looking back, it's like finding I get a photo. So Warren Beatty knows about this book. You told him, what did he say when you, you mentioned that it's that you wrote this um i had talked to him a couple years ago to kind of uh give him a heads up and uh and i had mailed him the book and and then i didn't hear anything um i said please know it's not specifically about you you're more of a vehicle uh more of an obsession you know aside from our friendship now that pulled me through life when i didn't want to live when i didn't know

how to be human and you were you always answered the phone and I'm always grateful for that and he said well yeah let me look at the book so I mailed it to him never heard anything um and I kind of let it go and I was working on the book and then I got an agent and then I got a publisher and then it was becoming a real possibility and I did two things when I called Warren and I said you know that book I was talking about And he said, no. I said, well, let me remind. Anyway, he said, oh, no, I don't know about this, you know. And I said, well, I'm happy if you want to read it or give me your blessing or I'm happy, whatever you need, because you matter first. I don't ever want to betray you if you're uncomfortable with anything. So he said, well, maybe a runner can bring it over. So I just printed it out. And I said, well, I'll just come over. I'll give it to your assistant. So I drove up to Mahal and then Logan meets me at the car and takes the box. And I figured that would be the end of it. But Logan's not. no, Warren's inside. Come on in. And I meet Annette, who's like in the kitchen doing something. And then I go in and sat with Warren. And we ended up talking for a long time by Elaine May. And I just read her biography. And then I said, he said, I have to warn you. I'm only going to read the parts that I'm in.

And I said, I hope you read more because you'll get the tone of the book. You'll find out that it's not like a kiss and tell. And he called me a week later and he had some notes. He was surprised that I had mentioned Jack Nicholson by name, which I thought was such an odd thing to be concerned with because there's hardly anything about Jack. In fact, most of the book isn't about these people as much as it is about my ability to be with them or my lack of being in awe. or just my life that I'm going through. And they happen to be just little pieces that I went through. So I said, okay, it goes, well, you have to understand.

I'm married 32 years. And I've got kids. I said, Warren, I know all that. And I mean, nothing has happened between us and way longer than that. That's not what this is about. And anyway, he gave me a couple of notes. And I said, I think those are valuable notes. And I'm going to get to that.

then he called the next week and I said I made those changes and we talked about something else and I you know he may have not been that concerned but the other thing that I did was hire a liable lawyer because there are a lot of people in the book and even though as I just said I feel like it's my point of view and not betraying I try to not tell stories when it didn't happen with other people around, you know, like private conversations, for the most part. But the lawyer was hilarious because he just said, did you really write this? And I said, yeah. And he said, are you sure? Because this is way too good. I mean, I'm telling you that because it was pretty funny coming from him. And he said, you know, I had to send to, send some phrases

from the book to make sure you didn't plagiarize. And he gave me this list of things that he had checked, like he had a swanky look as if he found that somewhere else it would be proof that it was plagiarized or you know anything worth doing is worth doing on cocaine i guess no one else has ever said that in their life because he he gave me the all clear with the book so yeah the book is is amazing it's a collateral start us your website is nicky nash that's n i k k-i-nash dot com your book you have more than one book and also your paintings and rave reviews. So thank you so much for being a guest.

Oh, thanks. I've been looking forward to it all week. And thank you for being so generous and nice. Yeah, thank you, Nikki. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. On Apple Podcast, please rate it and leave a review. Be sure to go to late-nighter.com for all your late-night TV news.

And you can find my podcast at late-nighter.com. slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week, and I'll see you next Tuesday. Hey, everybody, John Schneider, back here from Late Nighter, getting you set for today's conversation on Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. And today's guest is Veteran TV Associate Director Nikki Nash, who joins Mark to talk about her 45 years behind the scenes in late night working on shows like Carson, Conan, the Chevy Chase Show, and Jimmy Kim Alive. She has a new book out now, Collateral Star Dund. and here is our conversation with Mark and Nikki.