My Time with the Peacock (Part 2 of 2)
I freelanced in this role on and off from 2005 to 2012. (Forgive me, but some of these stories may be out of order since we’re relying on my memory from 20 years ago.)
One day, I got a call from Scheduling.
“Hey, are you available for Conan on the 6th?”
Fuck yes! I thought to myself.
“Yes. What’s up?”
“Another musical guest needs prompter,” they said.
“Who is it?”
“Rick Moranis.”
Um, what? Rick Moranis sings?
I shrugged. Truthfully, I didn’t care who the musical guest was. It didn’t matter. I would have said yes to anyone. I just wanted to be back in that studio.
On the day of the taping, I walked into the control room and, to my delight, was handed a laptop from the present decade. I still had to enter all the lyrics manually, but at least this one was fast.
During rehearsal, I watched tiny Rick Moranis perform what sounded like a country-folk song and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Or hearing. It wasn’t bad, exactly. Just… not great. Though I’d always liked him as an actor.
The taping went smoothly. Nothing crashed. Nothing died. No one yelled. For once, I left feeling like maybe this — this — could be the version of me people remembered.
Apparently, they did, because soon after, I was called in for Nightly News with Brian Williams. I was excited about all the different shows I was landing. With this much work, maybe NBC could become my forever gig.
Nightly News was straightforward. A later shift, but not brutal. I knew how to load the scripts and follow the rundown. I was ready. Focused.
Or so I thought.
At one point, I saw a note that a package was coming up. Right there in parentheses: (Package).
Great, I thought. Skip ahead. Load the next block.
Then the control room exploded.
“Prompter, where are you? He’s reading!”
I glanced at the monitor. Brian was reading from his hard copy.
Oh shit. What did I do?
Apparently, the package still required live voice-over. I’d assumed the entire thing was prerecorded, including the narration, and that we’d go straight to commercial afterward. We were still live.
I spun the wheel, trying to catch up to where he was, but it was too late. He stayed on paper. Whatever confidence the team had in me was gone in that moment. The only small mercy was that he wasn’t really on camera, so viewers at home wouldn’t have known what was happening.
I don’t even remember whether they let me finish the show or sent someone in to replace me. I do remember someone entering the room like a cop and escorting me out. Am I being arrested for poor prompting?
What a foul-up. So fucking embarrassing. And I’d been doing so well.
I was never called back for that show again. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was banned from that set.
Every day felt like a chance to prove I belonged there.
And just as often, a chance to prove that I didn’t.
After my fumble with Nightly News, it was back to the TODAY show.
The next incident happened much later in my time there, but it’s the most memorable. And the most hurtful.
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The TODAY show had a new cast by then. Lester Holt had taken over from Matt Lauer, and Meredith Vieira had replaced Katie Couric. They were so, so nice. Meredith was a breath of fresh air, honestly.
And then, somehow, I did it again.
One morning, despite everything being correct during rehearsal, I loaded the previous day’s script into the prompter. I still don’t know how. The show started, and Lester began reading before realizing something was off.
The screams in my headset were deafening.
“What are you doing? Where are you? That’s not the script!”
Lester switched to his hard copy.
This happened on air. Some viewers at home had to be thinking, What the hell is going on over there?
In the chaos, I loaded the correct script and rolled us forward. Every eye in the control room was on me. My heart was pounding. I thought I was having a panic attack.
During the commercial break, I apologized. If someone had been available to replace me, I’m sure they would have ripped me out of that chair. But no one was, so I finished the show.
When we wrapped, the control room was silent, tense, and terrifying.
I was so embarrassed I wanted to disappear. I slipped into the restroom outside the control room and hid in a stall, rubbing my temples and questioning my intelligence.
Then, boom. The door flew open. The producer walked in with someone else, both of them talking loudly, unaware that I was inside one of the stalls.
“And who the FUCK was that on prompter?” she said. “What a fucking idiot!”
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I waited until they left before opening the stall door.
The mirror held three of me, each one wearing the same sad little face.
I wanted to cry, but I held it together. Before anyone else could say anything to me, I went straight to the technical manager, Keith, and told him what had happened.
To his credit, he didn’t hesitate.
“I don’t care what happens during the show,” he said. “That kind of behavior and language is unacceptable. You don’t deserve that.”
Okay. Great. Except now she was definitely going to hate me.
Later, I heard she had “apologized.” Not to me. To HR.
I never saw her again. That moment has stayed with me longer than the mistake itself. Another trauma to add to my nightmare fuel.
I feel like today you’d get yourself fired for cursing about another employee like that. Or maybe not. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether control room etiquette has evolved. Either way, her behavior was unacceptable, and I was grateful someone finally said so.
We never crossed paths again. I wasn’t at NBC much longer anyway. By 2012, I’d landed a full-time, contract gig in Connecticut and told Keith — the only person who had truly defended me — that I wouldn’t be freelancing anymore, and to take me off the call list.
I maintained a very strategic Facebook friendship with one of Conan’s camera guys. Let’s not pretend it was organic. Every few months, I’d toss out a casual, “If something ever opens up, keep me in mind,” as if I weren’t absolutely trying to claw my way back in.
He’d gently tell me that no one at Conan was going anywhere. I believed him. It was the best show to be part of.
Not long after, Conan replaced Leno and took the show to L.A. anyway. So it never would have worked out.
In six years at NBC, I saw almost everything — except Saturday Night Live. I made it as far as the hallway once, but that was it. That floor was locked down like Fort Knox. You needed a badge, a reason, and probably someone vouching for you just to step off the elevator.
NBC wasn’t my only gig during those six years. A lot happened in between, and I’ll get to that later.
Even typing this now, I still wonder what the fuck I was doing and how I managed to get so distracted during live television. Maybe I should have gotten myself checked for ADD or something. It really was a problem, and perhaps a condition that had gone overlooked.
Many years later, now living in Florida, I get a kick out of riding the Race Through New York simulator featuring Jimmy Fallon at Universal Studios. The queue is done so well that it almost feels real, like I’m stepping back into the lobby from the Rockefeller Center entrance.
And that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to NBC again.
Check out Rick Moranis on Conan O’Brien
