The Gong Show season 2: Mike Myers finally confirms Tommy Maitland identity
So why reveal it now? Well, much of that seems to have to do with the fact that sooner or later, he realized that he would have to. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he spoke about wanting to keep up the persona until “it could no longer be sustained, because if I had continued to claim it wasn’t me, you would think I had gone absolutely insane.”
Myers also admitted that the game of playing a fake TV host actually turned out to be far more successful than he first imagined that it would:
“There’s much less design in it than you would think. I thought it would be found out immediately, and it was, but people enjoyed the audaciousness and the sheer whimsy of trying to maintain that … I didn’t know there would be a second season. I didn’t know I was going to enjoy it this much. I thought I would enjoy it, but it literally was a blast.”
Leading up to the return of The Gong Show the mystique of Maitland was one of the biggest reasons for the show’s success, and we’re actually not sure that we agree with the idea that it’s something that ever needed to be told. Maybe it would be a tad insufferable to have to keep this a secret the remainder of your life, but a big part of the fun of the first season was the joke that nobody on the show would acknowledge who Tommy really was, even though it was pretty obvious to every else by the end of the season.
Just in case you do have a hankering for more from The Gong Show, check out the preview below — we do think having Mike Myers on as a judge is a somewhat-inspired choice.
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