EXCLUSIVE: Craig Ferguson Goes 1-on-1 With Mediaite Ahead of the Premiere of His New CNN Show ‘American on Purpose’

“It’s a great day for America.”

Loyal viewers know that’s how Craig Ferguson began his CBS late night show for years — paying tribute to the land he now calls home. A native of Scotland, Ferguson officially became a U.S. citizen in 2008 — a journey which he chronicled in his 2009 memoir American on Purpose.

And now, 17 years after publishing that tome, Ferguson is back with a show of the same name celebrating a nation he truly loves, timed to coincide with its 250th birthday. The five-episode series — debuting Saturday at 9 p.m. ET on CNN — takes a unique look at the U.S. through the eyes of a man who truly has profound affection for it.

To be clear, Ferguson believes America has flaws. But at this moment in time, he believes a celebratory show is what’s called for — telling Mediaite he set out to make a show that’s “patriotic but not jingoistic.”

“What I didn’t want to focus on is what I feel needs changed in America,” Ferguson told Mediaite in an interview on May 19. “And I don’t even want to focus on that in the promotion of this show. Because I feel like if I discuss what I think needs to be changed, everything will become about that. And so I’m not unaware, I’m not an idiot…I’m not saying there aren’t problems, but that isn’t what I’m focusing on at this point in my journey.”

Ferguson opened up to Mediaite in a wide-ranging conversation about America, and what he’s hoping to show viewers in his new series.

This conversation has been edited for context and clarity.

MEDIAITE: How’d this all come together? Who approached who? And how was the show conceived?

CRAIG FERGUSON: It was a kind of organic thing. I had, about two or three years ago, I had lunch with [CNN EVP] Amy Entelis and Amy and I were kind of talking about …is there a world where I do something on CNN? And we were kind talking ideas around. And then IPC, the production company, had come up with this idea of doing a show that was based on each amendment. That’s how we started it.

And IPC, who I really liked working with, and Morgan Fallon, the show runner who came on and directed all of these shows and showran the whole thing, we all kind of worked together. And it seemed it was kind of dry to dry and do every amendment. Plus, there’s a lot of amendments. Some of them — and this is controversial – some of them are not that interesting. So…I had written the book American On Purpose in 2008 when I became a citizen, it came out in 2009. So we kind of circled back on that and looked at the immigrant experience. I’ve lived here since the 1990s, but I became a citizen in 2008. So we looked at that and taking an American’s perspective of America through an immigrant lens. And that really is what it became.

I’m a great believer that less format is better. I don’t know if you’re familiar with my late night show, but format’s never really been my f*cking thing! So as we got less formality and more kind of, let’s just go and talk to people and look at things and have an idea, the show seemed to develop.

One amendment we did was obviously the First Amendment. Fascinating and interesting, and a very kind of intricate and much more complicated subject than just freedom of speech — although that’s complicated enough. And then we did other things. Capitalism we did because although it doesn’t necessarily belong to America, it’s very much American life. So it’s not in the Constitution, but it kind of is what we do. And then, we looked at individualism, which is in the constitution, but we didn’t limit ourselves to that definition of it. And we looked at patriotism. And how that looks. So we got looser in our definition over time in the development of the show.

And then in the actual shooting of the show we did the same thing. Luckily working with, you know, with people and this is why it’s taken me a while to do this, I think, because I wanted to work with people who kind of felt the same way as I did about not only the United States, which is love — but complicated love. And I wanted to make a show which was patriotic but not jingoistic, and was not an ironic f*ck you to America. But more a kind of, ‘no, this is an awesome place.’ It’s complicated and there’s things in it which maybe we should take a look at. But… I think there are plenty of shows out there looking at what we need to take a look at. And this show is a little more celebratory than that. That’s what I wanted to do.

I was gonna touch on this later, but since you bring it up, anybody who’s followed you for a long time knows how deep your love of the country is. You talk about it all the time. Literally every show on CBS started out with you saying, “It’s a great day for America.” It’s been 12 years since you said that every night on CBS. Do you still feel that way? How has your relationship with America evolved in the 12 years since you’ve been off CBS and doing other stuff? Where are you with America right now?

I think where I am with it right now is I’m kind of like, in public, I find myself a little guarded. And I think that’s because there, it feels like right now, the media has always been very active in America. And I feel like, you know, sometimes whenever I do an interview or whenever I talk to someone in the media, I’m like ‘Maybe I should have a lawyer.’ Because what am I going to say that’s going to get me into trouble?

And so how do I feel about America right now? The same, in the sense that I love it, but it’s complicated. You know, and I’m a bit older, and America’s a bit older. And what I didn’t want to focus on is what I feel needs changed in America. And I don’t even want to focus on that in the promotion of this show. Because I feel like if I discuss what I think needs to be changed, everything will become about that. And so I’m not unaware, I’m not an idiot…I’m not saying there aren’t problems, but that isn’t what I’m focusing on at this point in my journey.

As someone who’s followed your career for a long time, it almost seems unfair to ask you about some of that because that’s not your jam. So I guess my question then would focus on people who aren’t fans of yours, and don’t know your work.

Do they even exist?

Very few. But they may they may look at the show thematically, they may see these these subjects and they may presume an agenda that does not exist. So how do you fight that perception? I’ve seen a couple of the episodes now. It really is not political in any way. But the perception undoubtedly, I feel like, will be that it is. So how do you combat that?

I don’t think I can, to be honest…I can’t really do anything about other people’s perceptions. You know what I mean? It’s like, I make the thing I make and then that’s what I made and how they perceive it is kind of up to them. I mean, look, I admit freely to being a control freak, but I can’t control how other people perceive me. I feel like it is what it is. I made the thing I made, and I’m saying what I wanted to say.

I think the truth is, if you are a very political person, then everything you see is political. And to a man with a hammer, everything is a nail. When I got sober, years and years and years ago, I still have a lot of friends who drink a lot. And it would annoy them a lot when I said, ‘Nah, I’m not going to drink anymore.’ And they took it as that I somehow was advocating temperance for them, and I’m not.

Be as political as you like. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being political. But this isn’t it. So if you say ‘Oh, that Craig Ferguson show, that’s a political show, that’s part of a CNN agenda.’ Then I would say, ‘No, you’re wrong.’ Because I thought about it. And I said to Amy Entelis in one of our first discussions, ‘What I’m absolutely adamant about is that I will make the same show for you as I would make if I was doing this for Fox News.’ It’s the same show. This show is my show. It’s my take. I wrote the book — literally wrote the book on this — and I’m staying convicted to that. I’m staying attached to that as an idea.

It felt like your show, watching it, it really did. [Mediaite screened two episodes prior to this interview] I don’t know how much you drew on this — but it reminded me of the shows that you did in Paris with Kristen Bell, and in Scotland with Mila Kunis.

That’s exactly what I was going for. That’s what I’m going for — to do it in an American sense. That is really what it is. Take whatever I am, or what my perspective is, and take it out into the country. And that’s it. That really is it.

Yeah and what drove those shows — and what feels like drove this one — was a curiosity and a genuine interest in how America works. In what Americans are like. That same curiosity you took to those road shows in Paris and Scotland feels like it carried over here, even though you’ve now lived here for decades. You still have that curiosity about the country.

Oh, I’m curious about people. And so, I am very glad you said that, because that’s exactly what I was going for. And I’m happy about that. I’m just curious about the people, I think that what I don’t have — maybe I’m lucky in the sense that because I am an immigrant, because I didn’t grow up with certain kind of like hard and fast agricultural references. Or beliefs about what Americans should be. I feel like it gives me a little more fluidity. But you talk to any immigrant, or maybe even really the children of immigrants as well, as everybody says, there’s a real sense of…pride seems too simple a word. There’s a sense of…jubilation seems too much maybe as well. But there’s a real enjoyment that comes with becoming an American. It’s awesome, and I’m very pleased I did it.

The first episode of the series focuses on new American citizens. Seeing the joy of a new citizen… take me through that episode, what was that like.

It’s funny because my friend K.T. Tunstall had just become a citizen fairly recently. I love her, she’s my sister. And so she was the first guest I called up. I said, I’m doing this show about how awesome it is, how it’s awesome to be an American and how awesome the America is. Do you want to be in it? And she said… Hang on a minute, I just have to talk to my husband. And then she said yes… and so we went to Texas and bought cowboy hats because we’re both from Scotland and we both wanted to do something really American and really kind of iconic for us.

And then from that beginning point I started looking at and talking to different Americans… I talked to a gentleman called Abdi Nor Iftin who won the golden ticket in Somalia to become an American… it’s like one in 250 people who applies gets this thing. And he came from a war zone and came in and now he lives in Maine. And it was the kind of similarity between the different experiences and how you end up here…There is a sense of history about it in a very personal sense. It feels like you’re part of something. It is an unusual bonding experience for people who have become Americans through the process of immigration. It’s an interesting kind of similarity that we all seem to have.

And that drives the question… how much do we all have in common anymore? Is that a question that you’ve thought about?

What we always had in common is not much. But the good thing, what I think is so important about America, is we don’t need to have anything in common. You don’t have to have anything in common to be an American. My experience as an American is wildly different probably from a lot of other Americans. We don’t to have something in common to be American. I think that’s the genius of America.

I don’t think you need to have something in common with someone to get along with them. I kind of like having different experiences. So I’m being a little semantic about it, but I feel like the difference is what’s fun, what’s great about it. Like when you go a road trip here, and you go through … I mean ,I firmly believe that you don’t know this country until you’ve driven across it a couple of times. Until you’ve gone from New Orleans, through Buc-ee’s, to the northeastern point of Maine.

If I can do anything with this show, if it has any kind of noble aspiration — and most of it is just like I hope it’s entertaining… But if I have any nobler aspirations to this, it is: These people are great and they’re fascinating and you don’t know them. And you should. Here they are. They’re interesting.

One of the episodes is focused on Freedom of Speech. What did you learn in that one? Where is Freedom of Speech in America right now?

There’s a very interesting thing that happened in that show where I didn’t know the seven dirty words that George Carlin had come up with … And what I did is, we recorded a stand-up show of mine and I asked the audience if any of them knew the seven dirty words. And I don’t want to give it away, but one of them did. And it was f*cking beautiful. A beautiful thing happened. And that’s one of the things I’m proudest of in the show is that somebody came out of the audience and f*cking said them. And who it was and how it happened was just fabulous.

There is a free speech topic in the news right now that you’ve got some unique insight on, which is the departure of Stephen Colbert. What are your thoughts?

I’ve been asked this question before. I feel like of everybody in this country, I’m uniquely unqualified to discuss late night television. And I’ll tell you why. I didn’t really watch it before I did it. I’d maybe see Dave, or Jay if I was around, but I wasn’t like a late night guy. It wasn’t something that was in my process. I certainly didn’t watch it when I was doing it because I was f*cking doing it every day. And then I did it for 10 years, and then after I did for 10 years, I never wanted to see it again. I don’t really throw myself into that debate because I’m really honestly not part of it. I’m not any more qualified — and maybe less qualified than most people — to talk about it.

Joe DePaolo is the Editor in Chief of Mediaite.

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