Meadows Talks SNL, Dating Advice

Tim Meadows is not a womanizer. He just plays one in the movies.

In fact, the actor behind the free-loving Leon Phelps is light-years different from his onscreen persona. While fans of Saturday Night Live have come to love his wacky characters and his comedic versatility, people around him describe Tim as a very cool dude - a normal guy who's just plain fun to hang around with. Crimson Arts recently got a chance to sit in on a conference call with the Ladies Man star and witness his normality first-hand.

The Harvard Crimson: Was the Ladies Man your own creation? Or did other people help you with it?

Tim Meadows: Actually, other people helped me. Dennis McNicholas, who was a Harvard Lampoon writer, and Andrew Steele, they came up with the idea of this guy who gives advice on love. So those guys came up with that aspect of the character, and I came up with the voice. I'd been doing this voice as a crank phone call to amuse my wife and myself, because I was leading a very boring life. I'd make calls to radio stations or call to order food or whatever, and I'd do this voice to sort of hide who I was, for a number of reasons. Because if I said I was Tim Meadows, the guy who came with the food would bring the cooks nephew waiting for autographs or something. So I was telling Andrew and Dennis a story about something that happened with that voice, and they thought it was really funny. They came up with that idea, and we just started improvising questions and answers.

THC: Who came up with that 70's motiff?

TM: Andrew and Dennis did, and the thing that I brought to it was the fact that I knew guys like Leon when I was younger. That's where I came up with the Courvoisier as his drink, and the fact that he likes romantic candles, and the fact that his advice is much more blunt than you would expect. We sort of just played with the idea that his advice had worked for him, but it might not necessarily work for other people. So when he tells women to go hang out at a bus station with no underpants, it's just something that he knows will work for him.

THC: How much involvement did you have in the actual script?

TM: A lot. Dennis, Andrew and I sort of have a process, which is we'll all write separately. We would talk about scenes that we wanted to do, and whoever had the idea, or whoever had a grasp on a scene or a monologue or whatever, they would write it, and then we'd bring it back in, and we would go over it together, and that was sort of how we worked. And when I look at the movie now, it's funny, because I can see things that Dennis wrote, or things that Andrew wrote, or things that I wrote, and it's distinctive from each other, but it's all part of Leon.

THC: How much of a hand did you have in casting? TM: Also a lot. They gave me a lot of rope to hang myself, I don't know why. But I think it was because I created the character with Andrew and Dennis, so I had a good understanding of what I wanted. So I hired a director, and it was my idea to cast Billy Dee Williams. Julianne Moore was the first person to come on the show who wanted to do Ladies Man, so when we had the green light for the movie, we sent her a script, and she said she wanted to be in it. So that was how we got her. As for Karyn Parsons, we were getting ready to shoot and we hadn't yet found a Julie, and finally Karyn sent a tape, and everybody loved her. It was easy for me to do Leon with her, because she understood how I worked with improvising and stuff, and it was a great chemistry. So, I was very instrumental in casting, but I can't take all the credit, because [director] Reggie did a lot of that too.

THC: Are you ever surprised when something catches on that you don't think will catch on? Like with Ladies Man, were you surprised at how well it did?

TM: Well, no. I mean, it's such a crap shoot, you know? You can't go out thinking that every swing is going to be a home run. It really is a sort of zen thing. You have to let the audience decide, "We love this character, we think this is funny, we want to see this again."

THC: What's it like to find yourself as a leading man with his own love scenes?

TM: Ah, I knew somebody was going to bring that up. [laughs] Uh, it was, you know-hard, in a way. No pun intended. [laughs] Seriously, though, people! It was just work, you know. I wasn't going into it thinking, "Okay, I gotta be a charming guy." I just kept thinking that this scene has got to be funny, and I didn't want to look like a bad actor. The hardest part of this movie was making the Leon and Julie thing work, because Leon is fake and Julie is real, and I just didn't think that people would buy me kissing Julie and her falling in love with me. So I was worried about that, but it worked out okay. [pause] I'm no Denzel. [laughs]

THC: Did any of your real life experiences come into play with your character?

TM: No, no. Not at all. Believe me, I've never been as cocky as Leon is. During high school I had one girlfriend, and she broke up with me to go out with a dude that was in college. My romantic life has been up and down. Even after I got on SNL, I still had to work at it. My wife, who I love, and who I've been with for the majority of my career on SNL, she wasn't easily impressed by the fact that I was on TV, because it was like, you could be on TV, but if you're crazy, nobody wants to be around you, you know what I mean? So I still had to work at it. I had to prove that I was decent guy. I'll just say that in my romantic life, it was either feast or famine. There were times when I couldn't believe that some beautiful woman liked me, and there were times I remember asking my sister if I was ugly.

THC: I've got a question for Leon.

TM: [in Ladies Man voice] Yes, what is it?

THC: I just started dating a girl, and I'm wondering how I can move it to the next level.

TM: [in Ladies Man voice] Well, listen, first of all, you've got to take it easy, and try not to force the issue. And I would say, try to find some very tight pants to fit into, get some Courvoisier, and slip it in her drink. Don't tell anybody I told you this, but that is how I do it. I get them drunk in the beginning, and then it's all good!