Alan Thicke is showing us his smile again with his new starring role as Jack Bailey in Queen for a Day: the Musical, which opens tonight at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts. The new musical is based on the first reality radio and TV show of the same name. We chatted with the Canadian-born actor about hosting duties, his musical prowess and getting sweaty and hot.
How did you get involved with Queen for a Day?
They called. They asked me if I knew about the original show and if I was familiar with the host [Jack Bailey] and if I would like to hear more about the musical based on that, and I said yes to all of that, and I read the script and read the music, and I said here we go.
In the musical, you’re playing TV host Jack Bailey, a role that you’ve played many times before throughout your career. Why are you the go-to emcee?
I know that the business nowadays is run by thirtysomethings, which has always been the case, and those are people who have grown up with me. There is some residual fondness there and some curiosity. I get a lot of calls to host things and do cameos because they want to still see if I am standing erect. It’s nice, it’s quite flattering. The emcee host part, it has less to do with Growing Pains and more with the humour column [“Boomerology”] that I write for The Huffington Post. It’s been widely received and highly circulated about the boomer generation. I have a wave of invites to emcee every event imaginable in the U.S. So anything that has to do with people over 40, I have become something of a go-to host.
What do you enjoy most about hosting?
It’s a pleasant combination for me. To get in touch and be in front of a live audience. It’s just you on your toes and you can’t host anything without being remotely current. In my case, I do 15 minutes before the event and then get on with the rest of the format of the show. In those few minutes at the beginning, I’ve got to read the newspapers and make my jokes in reference to the times. It’s like writing your own night show monologue.
Queen for a Day is considered to be the first reality radio and TV show. What do you think about reality television?
It’s certainly here to stay — that’s one reality. I’m fine with it. It’s a guilty pleasure for a lot of people. I know some of the key players who essentially invented that industry nowadays. I’m quite close with the Kardashians and I marvel at their hutzpah and gall and the fact they are able to take an age-old industry, a prurient gossip industry, and turn it into a billion dollar empire — it’s not a multi-million dollar industry. But this goes back before Jack Bailey and Queen For a Day. Walter Winchell always wanted to hear about celebrities, and now with our technology, we’re able to shoot right up their nostrils and get too much information. That’s really what it is.
Do you watch any of the shows?
Reality shows — I keep my eye on them. I can’t say I watch a whole episode. I do five minutes at a time. My son Robin [Thicke] is the in the midst of taping a parody on reality shows with Kevin Hart on BET. The Real House Husbands of Los Angeles. It’s flipping The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on its ear. I’ll be watching that from start to finish. The others, I check in.
You’re a singer and a songwriter. Where did your musical prowess come from?
Right out of the blue, my parents bought me a guitar at 17. I didn’t know what to do with it. I went to the University of Western, and I saw these guys with guitars meeting all the girls and I thought maybe I should be doing that. I learned Gordon Lightfoot songs, and if you knew that, you had a pretty good shot. I had a band and we played fraternity parties at Western. When we graduated, I took a year to see what I could accomplish in the entertainment industry. During the day I was at the CBC, and at night, I was doing music. We were having fun. In fact, it was at a game show, where my songwriting blossomed. I selfishly hired myself as a songwriter at a game show I was working at on NBC. It was the first game show Alex Trebek ever hosted. I wrote and sang that theme song, and that led to a lot of other opportunities. I ended up writing 45 other theme songs. I played Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway. I wrote songs for Olivia Newton-John, Barry Manilow, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash. It’s always been a great hobby and interest of mine. It’s a challenge to get it right.
Your song “Sweaty and Hot,” which you performed for the National Aerobic Championships in 1988, is making the rounds on the Internet. Any memories from that?
I don’t know how that snuck into cyberspace, and it seems to have struck a chord [laughs]. Daniel Tosh from Tosh.0 had me on his show, reuniting me with the winning aerobics team. I don’t know how many hits this thing got, but it got a lot of attention. At the recent Canadian Comedy Awards, they chose to do that as the opening musical number and they started playing that video on two screens. Then, I came out singing along with the video and then 30 dancers came out replicating those immortal steps. It was a pretty big number. In fact, Robin taught it to his band and they use it to warm up before his shows.
Queen for a Day is showing for a limited engagement. If its run is extended, will you be along for the ride?
I can extend for a week, and then I run out of time. I would love to see it as a hit and go back and revisit it.
Queen For a Day: The Musical, Richmond Centre for the Performing Arts, 10268 Yonge St., 416-259-1625. Sept. 26 – Oct. 7