(No one did stentorian spokesman gravitasandcheer better than Phil.)
I was always a huge fan of Phil’s fromSaturday Night.
He epitomized that show.
Credit: Don Cadette/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
He was an everyman who could do anything.
He could be a great straight man, he could do really large, funny things.
He was a huge influence on me.
J. Delvalle/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
But Phil would change a little something and keep it fresh every time.
He was a very prepared guy.
All of us [onNewsRadio] would take our scripts and just throw them around.
He had his in a notebook, parceled out into every scene with different tabs and different colors.
He would be extremely prepared.
That impressed me as well.
So he was like Dad in that sense to us.
When Phil got toNewsRadio, he was really the only name in the cast.
But he wasn’t a name here in the States.
He was super committed to making it look as a real and ridiculous as possible.
Ninety-nine percent of the time it did work.
He was a tremendous illustrator.
I’ve still got one of his doodles from a script.
In the first couple of years of the show, we were all getting to know each other after.
After [filming an episode], we would all go have a cocktail at the nearest place.
I loved being with him.
He was a real family guy.
At the time of his death, he was changing his life.
He had done a fair amount of movies, but they were pretty over-the-top comedies.
I remember having a conversation with him that he didn’t want to do that anymore.
So he was headed in that direction.
I think he would’ve gone on to become a tremendous film comedian, because that was his sensibility.
He was at the peak of his comedic powers.
[His death] was devastating, and it happened not too long after we’d finished the season.
So we didn’t.
We read it once on the day that we usually do, on a Monday.
We shot it on Thursday and on a Friday.
That was good that we were able to address it.
We’d make fun of him as much as we could.
Because we didn’t want to do it.
We knew he would do it 10 times better than we would ever do it.
And he was completely amenable to it.
and be ready and funny and brilliant all the time.
We talk about him [now] the same way we did when he was here.
I keep a picture of him dressed as a blue genie.
