It was a very Instagrammable moment. After standing in sub-zero temperatures outside the Comedy Central studio in New York for at least two hours, waiting in the ‘not guaranteed’ ticket line for a glimpse of my current political satire crush, we were handed two yellow paper tickets and ushered into a warmer room, where I could finally breathe. I took my cap off, unravelled my two woollen scarves and was working on the buttons of my long, woollen coat, when my better half turned to me and gestured angrily. “What,” I barked, annoyed. “Put those back on. We need a picture of you in the cold with the tickets. All that hard work and no proof? Tsk, tsk!” he said. Cap, gloves, two scarves and coat were back in place, and I grinned while my teeth chattered in protest, and that moment, on New York’s frost-covered winter roads, was frozen in time.
New on the agenda
For a while now, people travelling to the US aren’t content with just being taken to a National Park or the emerald beaches with soft, pillowy sand. They want more, and TV shows and concerts are fast becoming a tourist attraction. But wait, before you read on, this isn’t a TV show travelogue, but perhaps an advisory. All the methods described below are to be followed at the reader’s own risk. As a resident of Los Angeles, it was rather unnerving that I had not tried to get on any of the shows available locally. There’s Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Kimmel in Hollywood and Burbank, and I hadn’t made the effort to book tickets, even though I have been following Ellen’s show for a few years now. But my real journey to get on TV began one lazy afternoon, while I was out getting coffee at a café near home.
The barista took 10 minutes for my latte, preparing the espresso while her eyes were glued to the television. When she saw my disapproving look, she quickly pushed the cup into my hand and mumbled, “Do you know Ellen?” I nodded distractedly, while she went on with a new sense of purpose, “Well, my friend is on her show today and I was trying to see if I can catch him. I’ve been trying to get on the show myself and it seems almost impossible.” I nodded, meanwhile my brain began to hatch a plan. My husband’s birthday was the next week and he had always spoken about wanting to be on the Jimmy Kimmel show. So I went online and began my ticketing journey. Jimmy Kimmel had tickets on waitlist on his birthday and so I took a chance. Just because I had already begun, I booked the waitlisted tickets for The Daily Show in NYC for the next week, since we were heading there for a short break.
The day of the birthday, we battled the terrible Los Angeles (what with the fire and all) traffic, all 40 miles, and landed up at the studio in Hollywood, only to find the large, wooden doors latched shut. We stood outside awkwardly for a couple of minutes until one of the guards politely shook his head from a distance. I showed him my ticket, which had been confirmed by the studio a day earlier, but he sighed and shook his head again. “You’re too late,” he whispered.
Young people as part of an audience
New York was a completely different story. I had booked on a whim and hadn’t taken it seriously. After all, it was our first time in the big city and there was so much to do, instead of spending an entire afternoon waiting for a TV show, right? But that’s exactly what we found ourselves doing on a Monday afternoon in December, a day after a couple of inches of snow had piled up on New York’s roads. The winter sun was peeping out cautiously from behind the clouds, and we thought we would try our luck. It was only 1.30 pm and there was already a couple before us. People at the door said that they wouldn’t open for tickets until 4.30 pm. Now, that’s three hours in the freezing cold. We gave up instantly, and went away to explore the city. But around 3.30 pm, we got jittery. “Do you want to try?” my husband began, his voice barely audible over the scarf he had wrapped around his face. “What?” I yelled from behind my shawl. “Let’s try for Trevor Noah,” he yelled, and we walked back to the studio, only to find that the line had gotten much longer! If you’re one of the guaranteed ticket holders, you were on a different line. But we stood with the rest, who had hoped, like us, for a chance.
It was almost six before they let the ticket-holders inside, and a mere glance at the crowd didn’t give us too much hope. Rumours were flying around that they would send everyone back. One of the doormen shook his head knowingly, “I can’t tell,” he said. “Sometimes, we take some from the non-guaranteed line. Sometimes we don’t. It’s hit or miss.” This was starting to build up to a nail-biting finish. Two hours in, I could no longer feel my legs, or my nose, for that matter. Finally, our messiah came, holding yellow paper tickets. He counted heads, went past us, and firmly brought his hand down, to part the crowd two people after us. Phew!
Inside the studio, we waited another hour. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the taping, so our phones were off and in our pockets. The producer and stage manager went through the entire show and told the crowd when to cheer. “When you hear Trevor’s name, just lose it,” said the stage manager, “Where else in the world are you encouraged to lose it?” They even did a couple of rehearsals of us ‘losing it’. Apparently, even when you go crazy, you have to do it for the right person, at the right time. When it was 30 seconds before taping, everyone got antsy. “You know what you have to do,” the stage manager said for the last time, before he popped out of the scene. And as the introduction to the show played on, we gave him what he wanted.
Trevor’s role in the entire evening was rather brief. He came, finished the entire show in one take, answered a couple of questions from the audience (we had been warned to not ask to touch his dimples or any other part of his body), thanked us for being great and quickly walked out before people got off their seats. He even did a little dance during one of the commercial breaks. I can say this though. He is as witty and sharp off-screen as he is on-screen.
Finally, at 8 pm, we walked out of the studio, our legs a little wobbly and our hearts warmer than before. We were going to be on TV! We took the subway back to our guest house and quickly opened up the episode. We had told all our friends to catch it too and they were all on their phones, ready to take screenshots of us (and of me looking fondly at Trevor). The end.
Well, they never showed our side of the audience on screen, so I thought I would end it before the part where we completely lost it, again.
Shows you can get tickets for
New York, Saturday Night Live, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Los Angeles, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Late Late Show with James Cordon, Conan The Voice
