MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “Bill O’Reilly Is Running A Flawless Television Show”

Mediaite: The most memorable moment for me in your first week was the Levi Johnston interview, in which you asked him the Katie Couric questions. How did you come up with that idea?

O’Donnell: By 3pm in the afternoon I realized that I was really going to sit there and talk to Levi, about whom I had not spent 60 seconds thinking about, and I felt it was that horrible feeling of a writer staring at a blank page. I just didn’t have any idea of what I could possibly do. I was asking everyone, ‘what do I do with this.’ And they were trying to suggest what you’d call real things to talk to him about. None of it made sense to me. Why would we do that? And there are these moments where you just have to close the door and just be alone with the writer in me. I have no idea where it came from but I found myself saying to the producer of the segment, ‘get me those questions Katie asked, in sequence, I need to see every one of those questions.’ Minutes later the transcripts came rushing in. The first question was about newspapers and I just thought, ‘oh yes, this is perfect.’ It became a complete writing of a scene, in which I’m playing Katie Couric. I had to make sure to have it word for word. What I meant to convey by the end of that and through it was that this is fun, and Levi’s a good sport. He had no idea any of that was coming.

“Election night will tell you what is likely to happen on DADT. If there is a Republican takeover of the House, I think we’ll be living with DADT for quite awhile.”

Mediaite: You had been joking on Morning Joe and elsewhere that the reason you did the show was for the money. How true is that?

O’Donnell: It’s true of everything I’ve ever done other than work in the U.S. Senate. And it’s also true of every person working at the post office. No one loves mail. What do you do when you get up in the morning and leave the house? Go make money. That’s what everyone’s going to do. There’s not a taxi driver in New York that loves driving that much.

Mediaite: But there are probably some postal workers who would love to host a 10pm show on MSNBC.

O’Donnell: Of course. Guys that are working there think they’d do my job for free. We all think other people have it better than the things we do. I would do George Clooney’s job for free, but the truth is, if I did it for six months, I’d be demanding millions of dollars to do it for another week. That’s what I love about that kind of line as a writer – everyone thinks they know exactly what they just heard. They think they’ve heard something shallow, something negative. The first thing they do with it is not to say, ‘oh yeah, that’s completely true, and true of me.’ They think they’re hearing something about another way of living.

Mediaite: I asked on Twitter for suggested questions. Here’s one from @katedoak: “Does @Lawrence think we’ll see a move on DADT before the start of the next Congress?”

O’Donnell: No. The Pentagon report will be out before the next Congress and they’ve been waiting for that report. But when they have the report, then election night will tell you what is likely to happen on DADT. If there is a Republican takeover of the House, I think we’ll be living with DADT for quite awhile.

Mediaite: Will Lee Hatcher (the character O’Donnell plays) be back on Big Love?

O’Donnell: Yes. We’re trying to schedule a date for an upcoming episode and so there’s a chance. My schedule might force Bill to get a new lawyer.

Mediaite: Finally, who is the better U.S. President: Jed Bartlet, Matthew Santos or Barack Obama?

O’Donnell: Barack Obama. I never fell for our fictional Presidents as being real. And there’s just no question. Barack Obama is a better character than anything we came up with in fiction. We were much too timid to think Barack Obama was possible. In fact, the only reason we cast a minority as the Democratic presidential candidate (Jimmy Smits) and successor to Jed is he was the biggest television star we could possibly get for the role. It had nothing to do with him being a Latino. Then in the writer’s room we suddenly had a Latino candidate for President, and had to push our imaginations into a zone where we could accept as fiction writers that was possible. We were not seeing the future.

(This has been edited for length and clarity.)

Here’s the OMG segment last night:

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