Stephen Colbert Tells George Lucas: ‘I Don’t Want to be the Guy who Takes Over for Jon Stewart’

TV Tattle

Stephen Colbert tells George Lucas: “I don’t want to be the guy who takes over for Jon Stewart”
Lucas suggested Colbert take over The Daily Show during their chat today at the Tribeca Film Festival. “You could jump on his body and say ‘I won! I won!'” said Lucas. In response, Colbert praised future Daily Show host Trevor Noah, and said of Stewart: “I’ve worked with him and my memories of him is that he’s the keenest, most intelligent, most beautifully deconstructive mind — the clearest thinker I ever worked for. I would never get underneath his shadow. Someone else who doesn’t love him as much, might have a better time on that show than I ever would.”

Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie were approached to star in a Little House on the Prairie movie
Leaked Sony e-mails provided by Wikileaks reveal that Jolie last year turned down an offer to play Ma Ingalls.

PBS Finding Your Roots host defends omitting Ben Affleck’s slave-owning ancestry
Wikileaks’ release of Sony e-mails reveals that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and a top Sony executive discussed what to keep and what to leave out from Affleck’s episode of Finding Your Roots, which Gates hosts and produces. Gates insists it was his decision to omit the slave-owning discovery because other aspects of Affleck’s ancestry were more interesting.

Michelle Obama and Jill Biden will guest on The Night Shift
The First Lady and the Second Lady today taped the NBC drama’s May 4 episode, which will highlight the resources available to veterans.

Scandal‘s Jake Ballard story doesn’t add up
There should’ve been confirmation by now had what appeared to happen at the end of Thursday’s episode actually happened. PLUS: Don’t click here if you want to avoid spoilers from next week’s episode.

Jerry Seinfeld insists “I love @YouTube more than life” after calling the website a “garbage can”
“It’s where every great comedian lives forever,” he tweeted. “Just think 96% of everything is garbage.” PLUS: Why Seinfeld is wrong, and check out Seinfeld’s passport photo from when he was 16

U.S. Surgeon General helps Elmo overcome his vaccination fears
Watch as the Sesame Street star sings Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off.”

Elizabeth Perkins will play AMC’s Preacher mom
The Weeds alum has been cast as the mother of Preacher Jesse Custer, as played by Dominic Cooper.

President Obama didn’t get any Full House reboot updates when John Stamos visited the White House
The president did tell Stamos, who was visiting Thursday as part of a Greek Independence Day reception, that his daughters used to watch Full House but they’re now into Vine, according to People.

Why Cristela deserves a 2nd season
Cristela Alonzo’s ABC comedy has a slim likelihood of coming back after tonight’s Season 1 finale. “It will be a damn shame — and a mistake by ABC,” says Josef Adalian. “Cristela is a funny, family-friendly, sometimes edgy, and almost always entertaining comedy that, based on both its content and its Nielsen performance, deserves to live at least a little longer.” PLUS: Cristela is so special because of its star’s clear, strong voice, it’s twice as good as any other current multicamera sitcom, and read Cristela’s “A Possible Goodbye” message.

Watch the trailer for Lifetime’s Marilyn Monroe miniseries
The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe stars Kelli Garner as Marilyn, Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Joe DiMaggio and Susan Sarandon as Marilyn’s troubled mom.

Explained: Why there are so many awards shows
Sunday brings us the Academy of Country Music Awards, which is not related to the American Country Countdown Awards, the CMT Music Awards or the CMA Awards.

Parenthood boss would love to do a follow-up limited series, but not a movie
“I really don’t think of it as a movie,” says Jason Katims. “Because of the nature of the show, it never seemed like it would work in that way,” said Katims. “It always felt — it really got great as it ramped up after a few episodes.”

Recalling David Letterman’s failed audition for Airplane!
“He actually wasn’t bad,” co-director Jerry Zucker says in an oral history of the comedy classic. “He’s just not an actor. He looked great, and his comic delivery for all those lines was good, but I’ll never forget when we were on the set and did a screen test with him. One of his managers was there, and I sort of came up to him with a big, optimistic smile and said, ‘Well, I think we’re making an actor out of him!’ And his manager’s response was, ‘Fat chance.'”

Why do so many ESPN personalities get suspended?
ESPN reporter Britt McHenry is the latest in a very long list of names who’ve been suspended or making the sports cable network look bad. As Paul Farhi put it, “At ESPN, you apparently haven’t arrived until your boss tells you to stay home.” So why so many suspensions? “There’s an amplified environment” at ESPN,” says James Andrew Miller, co-author of an oral history of ESPN. “People who are on the air get riled up, and they earn their money by being provocative and saying provocative things and getting into debates. That’s in the DNA of their job description and their brand.” PLUS: McHenry has a history of rude behavior.

Meet the cast of Desperate Housewives: Africa
The African version of the ABC hit featuring a pan-African cast that filmed in Nigeria debuts next month.

Spike TV teams with Jerry Bruckheimer on Harvest drama
The cable network’s new mission to create “big and bold entertainment for a gender-balanced audience” will include this drama about a cemetery caretaker who is forced into the illegal tissue trade.

Maisie Williams previews Arya’s return to Game of Thrones
Will Arya Stark finally get a costume change on Sunday’s episode? PLUS: The flute is off-limits for GoT composer Ramin Dajwadi, and where are the killed-off GoT stars now?

Outlander fans tell Sam Heughan he’s not ginger or Scottish enough in person
The Starz star isn’t recognized on the street as much as you might think.

Masters of Sex casts a new actress to play Virginia Johnson’s daughter
Isabelle Fuhrman will take over the role as the show moves to 1966.

Which familiar face is returning to Revenge?
“It’s a fabulous re-entry into the show, one of the greatest sequences we’ve done on this show,” says showrunner Sunil Nayar. “It will literally blow people’s minds what happens at the end of that episode.”

Why Lip Sync Battle became a huge hit
One factor is actually having celebrities who — unlike Dancing with the Stars — are actually famous. Plus, it’s not overproduced and it’s built for the digital era of TV.

Why Sábado Gigante matters
For many around the world, the Univision variety show and host Don Francisco became a symbol of the American dream. PLUS: Sábado‘s best musical moments.

Duck Dynasty musical’s openly gay director: Willie Robertson met with my husband and I in our apartment
Broadway director Jeff Calhoun, who’s been aboard the Las Vegas musical since before Phil Robertson made his homophobic comments in GQ, said that Willie Robertson actually visited him and his husband in their NYC apartment — his “first gay apartment” visit — to assuage his concerns and to emphasize that Phil’s opinions don’t represent the entire Robertson family.

Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro follows the standup comic as she performs in an unusual venues
The “a bit dark” Showtime documentary follows the breast cancer survivor as she performs in a backyard, a flatbed trailer, an abandoned warehouse and other intimate but unusual venues. PLUS: Notaro finds just the right doors to knock on, and Notaro talks about her new special.

Cedric’s Barber Battle pits 3 barbers in a CW haircutting competition
The losers are told by Cedric the Entertainer, “you’ve been clipped.”

Co-creator defends Orphan Black‘s increasing complexity: “We’re not going to spoonfeed the audience”
Season 3 sees the addition of even more layers to the BBC America series. “It’s a process of everyone involved in the show going, is this logical, and what can we do to reinforce it?” says co-creator Graeme Manson. “All the way from the writers room through production and the art department and all our executives, and the net execs, too. We get read and vetted for clarity the whole way, from our crew, right up through editing. That’s the trick.” PLUS: Tatiana Maslany talks filming Season 3, Orphan Black has turned into a confusing mess, the complex conspiracy theory diminishes the series, the season’s first two episodes only emphasize the show’s problems, and “the tangle of factions, agendas and players the show built up in its second season looks like a dozen strands of DNA put through a blender and then bedazzled.”