That Time Sam Donaldson Tried to Kill Me

As I have nothing interesting going on in my life, I thought I’d relive a tale from days of yore …

Once upon a time I was a member of a musical comedy troupe called The Water Coolers (shout out to any Coolers reading this!!!) which specialized in performing for corporate events both big and small. It was a great gig, and the shows routinely killed. I mean killed. They were genuinely funny, performed by insanely talented people and typically done for very friendly audiences. They almost always brought the house down.

But the instances where the show didn’t kill? The times where a number crashed or a performance went belly up? Those shows damn near killed me.

Sam Donaldson nearly killed me.

We were in Las Vegas, doing a gig for the Western Petroleum Marketer’s Association (Big Oil, essentially, which is only slightly less horrible than the time we did a gig for Big Tobacco). Rather than performing one long set, we had little interstitial numbers throughout the evening’s presentation designed to keep the audience engaged and entertained, and also to introduce important people taking the stage — people such as the evening’s keynote speaker, Mr. Sam Donaldson, legendary reporter and anchor for ABC News.

The number went just fine. We sang our little song, Mr. Donaldson came out to great aplomb and then proceeded to speak about I have no godly idea what, because by that point I was already backstage raiding whatever I could find on the refreshments table. All was going swimmingly.

Later in the show, I made my way onstage to perform a solo number called “Hottie,” a song about the trials and tribulations of being the hot guy in the office. To set the number up, there was a little monologue that took on the confessional tone of an AA meeting, where my character would admit to the audience just who and what he was (“Hello. My name is Steve … and I’m a hottie.”). Then I’d look to the audience, point to a dude in the first row and enlist him in my effort to remove the stigma of being labeled the office stud. “You, sir,” I would say, then look left to right in a conspiratorial kind of way. “You’re a hottie, aren’t you?”

Some guys would demure, some guys would laugh nervously, some would puff their chests out to let everyone know that damn right they were a hottie. But they’d always play along and it was always good for a laugh.

This night, I looked out to the front row and who did I see but … Sam Donaldson! He was still there! Sitting in the audience! I was shocked. Events like these, people of his stature usually didn’t stick around. Why would they? They’d done their speech, gotten their check … why not hop on that private jet and zip on back to the homestead?

But, for whatever reason, Sammy boy had decided to stay and watch the show. How could I not use him?

I stepped forward, looked him dead in the eye, pointed at him and said, “You, sir …”

Before I could even finish the line, he leveled me with a stare that communicated a clear message: “I’m not in the mood to play your fucking games, monkey boy. Move along.”

My heart froze in my chest, and my shirt was instantly drenched in sweat. In a microsecond, my mind calculated its options faster than the IBM Watson. Could I play it off like I was talking to someone else? Is there a line I could improvise that would let us both save face? How convincingly could I fake a stroke?

I did my little “look left and right” thing, hoping to buy myself more time to think of some way out of this nightmare. As I did, I caught a glimpse of the jumbotron placed upstage so the folks in the cheap seats could see every rivulet of sweat making it’s way down to my shirt collar. Only it wasn’t my face on the monitor. Some astute cameraman, instantly picking up on what I was doing, had swung the camera directly onto the face of Sam fucking Donaldson, his eyes continuing to shoot their warning at me:

“Don’t fucking do it, you little piss-ant. I am Sam Donaldson. I will crush you.”

Here’s a little thing some of you might not know about me … I’m not an improv guy. People often assume that if you’re an actor you can do all the actor things, but it’s just not true. I’m not quick on my feet. I’m not the guy who comes up with a “zinger” on the spot. I’m the guy who gets his ass kicked in an argument then thinks of a great comeback in the car an hour later.

Bottom line, I was trapped. There was nothing for me to do but play it out.

I looked back into the hard gaze of Mr. Donaldson, those severe eyebrows adding an extra layer of armor to his visage. I steeled myself. Keeping my voice as level as possible, I went on. “You’re a hottie, aren’t you?”

Silence. Dead fucking silence. The man didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t give me anything. We were frozen in stalemate.

In reality, the moment lasted no more than a second or two. In my head, I’m still there, covered in flop sweat and wondering if there will ever be a day when I’ll be able to unclench my asshole.

And then … the gaze softened, his body relaxed, and he shrugged as if to say: “Well of course I’m a hottie. I’M SAM FUCKING DONALDSON.”

The audience lost its shit. My heart resumed its beating. Time unfroze and continued its steady march.

The son of a bitch had played it perfectly, and in the process gotten the biggest damn laugh of the show. Sure, he might nearly have given me a heart attack, but hey … that’s show business, kid.