In Bob Newhart’s second hit comedy, Newhart, he played a Vermont innkeeper with one simple goal: to read the newspaper uninterrupted.
That didn’t happen.
One of the most disturbing characters in his story was Stephanie VanderKelen, the spoiled heiress turned incompetent maid. Played by Julia Duffy, the character was young, energetic, blonde and full of self-importance. Newhart was playing… Newhart.
From Monday morning read-throughs to Friday night tapings, Newhart and Duffy did a comical dance with each other. As a writer on Newhart’s final season, I got to observe their chemistry firsthand. They could elicit laughs from little things like a slow blink or a raised eyebrow.
Duffy received seven Emmy nominations for his performance on the show, while Newhart received three. (Unbelievably, Newhart’s first Emmy win was as a guest actor on The Big Bang Theory.)
On July 18, upon news that Newhart had died at age 94, Duffy posted a heartbreaking tribute.
A few days later I contacted her to express my condolences.
“I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week,” Duffy said by phone, “and I thought, ‘Has anyone ever been so unassuming on the surface and yet had such a big impact?'”
She continued, “Of course, if I said that to Bob, he’d say, ‘Well, there was Jesus,’ and that would probably be his response: ‘And then there’s me.’
Read this exchange out loud to hear how perfectly Duffy understood Newhart’s unique comedic voice: Below is the rest of our conversation, condensed and lightly edited.
As one of the stars of Newhart, your name will forever be linked with his. That’s great, isn’t it?
It’s so lovely, and I have such fondness for the history of comedy and all the people he worked with, and Jack Benny, who was such a big influence on him.
Bob seemed to be more tolerant of women doing funny things than a lot of his men were. On his first sitcom, “The Bob Newhart Show,” Suzanne Pleshette and Marcia Wallace were both very funny. And he obviously enjoyed your work. Is that true for you?
It seemed to me that on our set, fun was everything. Fun was king, and nothing else mattered. It was the goal, it was sacred.
Bob’s assessment of me was… he never directly complimented me. I don’t think stand-up comedians do that. It’s not their language. And I didn’t expect or need to hear what he thought of my work. But he treated me as an equal from the beginning. That was all the validation I needed. That kind of equality wasn’t the norm yet. There were no Tina[Fey]or Amy[Poehler]or any of the other standard-bearers then. So it was all about being treated as an equal as a young woman in comedy.
Plus, Bob wasn’t one to give a damn. We were at a social gathering once, and Ginny[Newhart’s wife of 60 years]said, “Is he telling you how wonderful he thinks you are?”
I laughed and said, “Well, not really.”
She then turned to him and said something along the lines of, “Newhart, you tell me all this… why don’t you tell her?”
It was really funny to see Ginny being so forthright with Bob because he doesn’t show his emotions very much. Bob married the perfect person. She was amazing. With Ginny, you can get away with anything. I also love that she calls Bob “Newhart.”
Bob Newhart performs at the Mill Run Theatre in Niles, Illinois in 1973.
William Vendetta/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Someone said that Bob blinks strangely. Do you agree?
His blinks were as well-timed as his famous pauses, and the way he paused mid-joke was like saying to the audience, “Now you get the joke and you can start laughing.” It was remarkable what he did.
I think of him as a “contextual comedian,” which is why he was perfect for sitcoms. Even in his stand-up, he would create scenarios for his characters to react to, like the scene where the president of the West Indies Company talks to Sir Walter Raleigh on the phone and hears about tobacco for the first time. (“So you roll it, and where do you put it?… You put it between your lips, Walt? And then what do you do? (LOL) You light it?”)
And it was a situation where a person would have to deal with something that they were totally unprepared to deal with. He was just reacting.
I just did a couple episodes of “Night Court,” working with Melissa Rauch. She’s such a lovely person, and of course I worked with Bob on “The Big Bang Theory.” She really understands that pure comedy isn’t dependent on the current era — the current way we talk, the current memes — because those things change. But when you find the funny in something that’s timeless, that’s the purest and best comedy. Monty Python will be funny forever.
“We were so desperate for this show to remain funny, even after so many decades,” Newhart said, “and Melissa really gets that. She watched the show and she tried to follow in our footsteps. And it just seemed like a cosmic thing to me that this pure comedy has been passed down and respected and absorbed and passed down from generation to generation.”
I would say to young people, if you’re interested in comedy, you need to know who Ernie Kovacs is. You need to know where we come from. I worked with Tom Poston, who did one of Bert Lahr’s vaudeville acts. I feel very fortunate to have a connection to vaudeville.
I loved WC Fields, and I remember once I was talking with Peter Scolari about the movie “Million Dollar Legs,” and he said, “Speaking of Bill Fields…” I’d never heard anyone call him “Bill Fields,” and it was as if they were old friends. But in a way, they were.
We were all comedy nerds – in fact, Peter’s favorite comedian was Buster Keaton.
I remember once, my husband, Jerry, and I were preparing a TV night for our kids to watch Abbott and Costello for the first time. Jerry said, “What if they don’t think it’s funny?” and I said, “Well, just don’t do it.” Luckily, our kids laughed and it turned out they both have a great sense of humor, so we were right to instill that in our kids.
Bob Saget, Bob Newhart and Jimmy Kimmel attend the charity event.
Katherine Page/Getty Images
When was the last time you spoke to Bob?
I spoke to him last year after his birthday, which was on September 12th, the same day as Peter[Scolari, who passed away in 2021 and is known to millennials as Tad Horvath, Heather’s dad on Girls]and we’d been talking a lot since I’d lost Peter the year before.
Bob always responded to my messages, but at some point, everything started going through his longtime friend and publicist, Jerry (Digny), and I realized that it was too much for Bob. It had been a year since Ginny passed away, and I couldn’t imagine Bob without her. It seemed impossible. Bob desperately needed Ginny.
But I had been in contact with their youngest child, Courtney, and I knew that Bob was home, that the family knew this was going to happen, and that they were all there.
Is there a story or moment that you and Bob consider to be a favorite?
The most memorable moment was right at the beginning. The character, Stephanie, hadn’t been here very long. She’d moved out and her parents wanted her to come back. So, in this episode, I was on the phone with my parents, and it was so funny, and you guys were obviously just listening to me. And then I was rehearsing and Bob was walking across the stage with a cup of coffee and he stopped and looked at me.
So I said, “Don’t watch. You can’t watch me making comedy phone calls.”
And he said, “It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?”