Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

After star turn, Spicer says he regrets berating press over inauguration crowds

NEW YORK — During his surprise comedy skit at the Emmys on Sunday (Sept 17), Sean Spicer may have made light of his six-month tenure as the White House press secretary, but a message was also embedded in his performance.

Sean Spicer speaks at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept 17, 2017, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Photo: Invision via AP

Sean Spicer speaks at the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept 17, 2017, at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. Photo: Invision via AP

Follow TODAY on WhatsApp

NEW YORK — During his surprise comedy skit at the Emmys on Sunday (Sept 17), Sean Spicer may have made light of his six-month tenure as the White House press secretary, but a message was also embedded in his performance.

In an interview Monday morning, Mr Spicer said he now regrets one of his most infamous moments as press secretary: his decision to charge into the White House briefing room in January and criticise accurate news reports that US President Barack Obama’s inauguration crowd was bigger than US President Donald Trump’s.

“Of course I do, absolutely,” Mr Spicer said.

For Mr Spicer, who resigned this summer after repeated clashes with the media and a sharp disagreement with Mr Trump over the appointment of Anthony Scaramucci as communications director, the Emmys were his latest attempt to court the largely liberal coastal entertainment and news elites he so acidly disdained as the president’s alter-ego spokesman.

The once-obscure party spokesman has been elevated to a level of celebrity he scarcely dreamt possible a year ago. And, like many before him, he hopes to translate his embattled tenure into something more lasting and lucrative. So the Emmys were also a chance for Mr Spicer to cultivate a television industry audience that he may need as he seeks speaking engagements and paid television appearances in his post-White House life.

Mr Spicer’s arrival on the Emmys stage garnered mixed reviews, however, not so much for his star turn with Stephen Colbert of The Late Show on CBS, but for Hollywood’s sudden embrace of a man once viewed as a not-so-truthful mouthpiece for a president that much of the town despises.

As Mr Spicer prepared to return to Washington, he was asked if he was worried that Mr Trump would take offence over the skit, which many viewers saw as lampooning the president’s preoccupation with the size of his inauguration crowd.

“I certainly hope not,” Mr Spicer said after a brief pause. “This was an attempt to poke a little fun at myself and add a little bit of levity to the event.”

Mr Spicer made his Emmys appearance at the end of Colbert’s opening monologue, which included a long riff about Mr Trump’s uneasy relationship with the entertainment industry and his apparent frustration that his NBC reality series The Apprentice never won an Emmy Award.

Colbert, a frequent critic of both Mr Trump and Mr Spicer, went on to say that the president was primarily concerned with TV ratings, but that there was no way to know how large his audience was.

Colbert asked, “Sean, do you know?”

At that point, Mr Spicer shot out of the wings, pushing a podium similar to the one immortalised by Melissa McCarthy in her impersonation of him on Saturday Night Live.

He recited his briefing room statement, nearly word for word. “This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period — both in person and around the world,” he declared with a semi-straight face.

Laughter and applause could be heard throughout the Microsoft Theater, and celebrities in the audience were seen on the telecast, reacting with their mouths agape.

Mr Spicer said he did not give the president or senior White House staff a heads-up about his appearance, which had been in the works for several days.

In fact, virtually no one knew about it. According to Mr Spicer, Colbert suggested the idea himself, and passed it to the former press secretary through his producer at CBS, who had gotten to know Mr Spicer well years earlier when he was a producer on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

When Mr Spicer and his wife left Washington for Los Angeles on Saturday morning, he donned a disguise. He would not say what it was, though a friend of his hinted that it might have included fake facial hair. After checking in, he stayed in his hotel room, leaving only for a walk-through that took place after the hall had been cleared. When scripts were handed out to crew members and performers, his name was nowhere to be found — replaced by an innocuous surname that began with the letter “S”.

A person familiar with the planning of the Emmy programme said Monday that Colbert and his staff regarded Mr Spicer’s appearance as both a joke at the expense of Mr Trump and a way to poke fun at Colbert, too. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions involving the Emmys and Colbert.

Just as Me Trump had been thin-skinned in employing a spokesman to exaggerate the size of his inaugural crowd, this person said, Colbert was mocking himself by using Mr Spicer to overstate the size of his viewership.

Since leaving the White House last month, Mr Spicer has been on a speaking and television circuit, trying to rehabilitate his image. On Wednesday, he appeared as a guest on the ABC late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live, in an interview that drew criticism for its perceived leniency toward Mr Spicer.

When Kimmel brought up the news conference where Mr Spicer had talked about inaugural crowd sizes, Mr Spicer answered, “I’m aware. I appreciate the reminder of how it went down.”

The next day, Colbert was a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live and the two talk show hosts talked about Mr Spicer.

“I’ve always wanted to talk to that cat,” Colbert said.

Kimmel said, “A certain part of me felt sorry for him.”

Colbert replied: “Really? *Cause he wasn’t apologising. He wants to be forgiven, but he won’t regret anything he did. You got to regret something you did to be forgiven.”

But at least among some people in Hollywood, Mr Spicer may have been forgiven, or at least worthy of an Instagram.

At the Television Academy’s Emmy after-party in Los Angeles, several gown- and tuxedo-clad revellers stopped to gawk at Mr Spicer.

Other guests patiently lined up nearby — Mr Spicer was posing for selfies. THE NEW YORK TIMES

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.