The Graham Norton Show returns to TV tonight for a new season of celebrity guests, with the likes of Lady Gaga, Demi Moore and Colin Farrell on the couch. Chat show king Graham Norton manages to pull in the big names year after year, but while many of his guests have left a lasting impression, it hasn't always been for the right reasons.
Talking about how his interview style had changed over the years since his earlier show So Graham Norton began in 1998, he said: "(In the 90s and 00s) you could be a bit spikier, and I think that was the mood of the time...the guest was the butt of the joke. Now, it's very rare that I would put a joke in a question. Now, we want the guests to be funny. It's a more generous thing now."
But he added that he doesn't go in for emotional confessionals, revealing: "I remember Jon Voight once was telling a story about being young, and he made himself cry. We cut that out. Not on our show! No tears on our sofa!"
As This Morning hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard asked whether he would ever release a tell-all book about his chat show guests, he laughed: "That's my retirement plan - the smell of burning bridges..."
In the meantime, this is what Norton has had to say about his best and worst ever celebrity guests.
Norton's Favorite Guests
Pretty much the entire world is starstruck by Tom Cruise and Norton is no exception - he had nothing but good things to say about welcoming the Hollywood A-lister onto his show.
According to the New Zealand Herald, Norton said of Cruise visiting his set: "He remembers everyone's name. And on the way out he remembers everyone's name and what they do."
For years, Norton had been saying that Julia Roberts was one of the few stars who hadn't yet done his show that he couldn't wait to meet, but when she was finally booked in 2023 she definitely lived up to his expectations.
The chat show host has named her as one of his favourite guests, revealing she was the "secret sauce" who kept all of the other guests talking.
It's no surprise that Lady Gaga is making a return visit this series as she has regularly impressed her host over the years for being kind to fans.
Norton told The Express: "When she came on our show she was really nice to the audience and to fans who had made dolls of her. It was a really beautiful moment.
"But when Madonna was on, we had someone who had painstakingly made dolls of her in each outfit from red carpets. We showed them to her and she just went, ‘Those glasses are wrong.’"
Before his Oscars controversy kicked off, Will Smith was one of Norton's most delightful ever guests - even chipping in to arrange a Fresh Prince segment for the show as his old castmates joined him for a dance.
Norton told The Sun: "Will Smith produced that whole segment. He flew in Carlton, he got the DJ, he did it all, so it was an amazing moment. And to see an audience that happy over a sustained period of time, it was like a drug. It was like Oprah giving away a car to everybody. It was that atmospheric."
He might not have the "nice" factor of some of Norton's other favourites, but that's exactly why he loved his encounter with Apprentice star Lord Sugar.
He shared with The Sun: "I think with most people in this industry, the ‘wanting to be liked’ gene is quite strong in them, so they’ll just fake it. Occasionally, I’ll get a guest who doesn’t have that gene. They don’t care, but it’s so unusual it takes your breath away. Oh wow, you really don’t care, and I quite like it, like Lord Alan Sugar."
Norton's Worst Guests
Mark Wahlberg was a pin-up for Norton in his early days of fame, so he could never have guessed that he would later be annoyed to find the star drunk and sitting on his lap while he was trying to carry out an interview.
He told The Mirror: "The famous (worst guest) was Mark Wahlberg, I guess. He was fine when he came on the show. There was not a hint of it and then about 20 minutes into the show (alcohol) caught up with him. Oh it was bad. At one point Mark was asleep on the couch in front of the audience."
Norton also spilled that Mickey Rourke had emerged clutching a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels before his interview, causing a "nightmare" for filming.
He told the New Zealand Herald: "Mickey Rourke he was just exhausting because he wanted to smoke all the time. I'd turn away for a second, turn back and he'd have lit another cigarette. It was so boring – you feel like a teacher taking children on a school trip, not a chat show host."
Another actor who failed to make a good impression on Norton was Kevin Costner, who he thought was rude.
He told The Express: "I ask him a question and he looks at me like ‘Jesus, do I have to talk to this man?’ He kind of gives a half-a*** answer and Helen Mirren chips in and asks him a question and he could not be happier."
You'd think megastar Robert De Niro would be a huge coup for any chat show host - but as Norton told an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival in 2018, he found the actor wasn't nearly as good at telling his own stories as he was at acting his lines.
"He’s not a storyteller, or very verbal," Norton said. "He’s a benign presence." He said that De Niro had waded into an endless anecdote: "We were all leaning in, willing it to be amazing. Then he finally went, ‘Why am I telling this?’ Nobody had an answer. We cut it."
It won't come as a surprise to many that Norton's most disliked guest was disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein, who appeared before the wave of sexual assault allegations made against him.
Speaking at an event in 2022 after Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years, Norton said: "I often talk around who my least favourite guest was, but someone reminded me, I have a really good answer to this now. It’s Harvey Weinstein. He’s in jail, so he gets the prize for the worst guest ever."
Weinstein's conviction was overturned in April and he is currently awaiting retrial. Norton told of the uncomfortable experience of Weinstein trying to force his way onto a fully booked show by email.
He said: "I just had to turn to my booker and say, ‘Can you please deal with this?’ And at the time, I thought that sort of attitude, that kind of, ‘Oh no, I’m going on,’ that is what makes you a very good producer.
"But of course, now that we know what we know, that is what makes him a predator. It was that kind of weird, tunnel-vision thing. And it was sort of chilling in retrospect, because I was just laughing at those emails. But you realise, oh my god, that is an insight into how that man is."
The Graham Norton Show airs on BBC One at 10.40pm on Friday, 27 September.
