It’s a Match made in heaven! Playful Emmy, Tony, and SAG Award-winning comedy king Martin Short is lending his unbridled, often offhand hilarity to ABC‘s latest reboot of Match Game.
Taking over as host following Alec Baldwin‘s five-season run from 2016 to 2021, Short is set to oversee a season filled with top-notch celebrity guests, including his Only Murders in the Building podcast partner Selena Gomez, trying to match the answers of contestants playing for piles of cash. Here, he gives us his take on this primetime update on the boozy TV chestnut.
You just wrapped Season 5 of Only Murders and jumped straight into this, right?
Martin Short: The hustle is real. I know! It’s real and maybe pathetic, but that’s me. [Laughs]
Selena is one of the guests you have coming in, but no Steve Martin? Is he too good for game shows?
Yeah, he’s too good for a game show. You nailed it. [Laughs] But Selena is all game and totally fun…in Steve’s case, we did just finish shooting, so why I’m doing it is the insanity.
You’ve done sitcoms, sketch comedy, animation, drama — your turn on Law & Order: SVU people still talk about — you’ve hosted a talk show and done Broadway. So fill in the blank: The one job I haven’t been offered yet is _____.
I guess porn star. [Laughs] No one approached me on that one. And of course I’d never hosted a game show before. There you go! This was the first time I’ve done it.
And how do you like it?
I like the looseness of it, but also there’s danger in doing something that you don’t know [about]. You only find out at the end of the experience whether it was a good decision or not. That is always exciting to me.
How much of the show is actually scripted?
It’s pretty free-form. Certainly the questions are written and the game itself is structured, but everything else is in the moment.
Do you get to use that iconic skinny microphone that Gene Rayburn used on the original Match Game?
No, that’s gone. That was ’62.
It’s such a cool look. The skinny mic, the ashtrays, and the drinking on set were what made that original so wild.
Well, if they let them have ashtrays and smoking, I’ll get the mic! [Laughs]
Match Game, Series Premiere Wednesday, July 23, 9/8c, ABC