ABC/Greg Gayne (NEW YORK) — If you ask Will Arnett why he decided to executive produce a reboot of the campy ’70s game show The Gong Show, and the Arrested Development star will smile.
“Anytime you say the name The Gong Show, you smile,” he told Good Morning America After Hours host Lynda Lopez. “I had such good memories of the [original] show, and I thought, ‘When you have something like that…it has so much good will built in…It’s so much fun, and it’d be nice to do a show that’s just about having a good time.”
Like the original, celebrity judges are key to the reboot, which debuts Thursday night. “Everybody from Jack Black, to Zach Galifianakis, to Will Forte and Fred Armisen, and Elizabeth Banks…the list just keeps going. All these fun, funny people, who are friends of mine, who had the same reaction that I did about The Gong Show, and said, ‘Yeah, I wanna come on.'”
The show is hosted by Tommy Maitland — a fictional British comedian who’s actually Mike Myers in disguise. Even so, Arnett insists he’s been a Maitland fan for years.
“I was looking forward to Tommy exposing himself to America,” Arnett deadpanned.
The Gong Show debuts Thursday night at 10 p.m. Eastern time on ABC.
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