The Waltons - Ask Judy 79 - behind the scenes with Judy Norton

welcome back to another segment of behind the scenes of The Waltons today I'm going to be taking more of your questions in another segment of ask Judy this question is from Angry so sorry you're angry I hope my show makes you less angry anyway uh who asked I would imagine computer technology and mobile devices have revolutionized TV movie scripts changes can be made and distributed instantaneously now very true yeah usually you'll get uh you might get emailed the script instead of um it being hand delivered uh driven to your door to be delivered uh it's still oftentimes you you still do get an actual physical copy of the of the script so you can make notes in it um then I wouldn't be surprised if everyone walks around and set with an iPad in their hand um I don't know about that um usually uh when you get on set there are Little Pages they're you know like 5 by seven um and it's called the um uh the sides and so you will have those for the day and it'll it will be um a miniature version of all the scenes that are being filmed that day so in the sequence they're going to be filmed so you have that for reference um to review your lines or know what's coming next or the you know the crew has it so they know what's happening what props need to be brought in what equipment they need to have on stand standby and stuff like that so we would be given those um every morning or every day when you arrive for work you'd get those we didn't have that um at the time of The Waltons but those are pretty typical now other people if they have their whole script on their iPad or computer they might walk around with it it might be on their phone you know I um tended to like the the physical copies but they're so small the type that sometimes you know now it's like I can't read that let me have my m magnifying glass with that you also said in another news commercials are ruining television yeah I know there's so many especially in reruns um where a lot of an original uh show will have to be cut down to add extra commercials I hear that a lot from all of you about watching reruns of The Waltons and how much ends up getting cut out if a show was originally scheduled to be a certain amount of time in its first run then the commercials will fit into those slots so you won't be losing programming time but certainly reruns it's like all bets are off but things are getting more and more expensive so I guess they need they need those extra advertising dollars to pay for the show so it is you know a tradeoff and I think that's why a lot of people are going and willing to pay premiums you know for to subscribe to different uh streaming channels because you can watch things without commercial and you have are basically paying that extra fee every month to avoid paying for commercials so it's it's that tradeoff but you can also you know with the Waltons or other series that you love you can you know if if it's possible for you buy the DVD sets things like that by the seasons and then you can watch them at your leisure with no commercials and I know the entire box set of The Waltons is available this is not a pitch I get nothing for people buying this other than and maybe maybe 2 cents for a royalty but it's pretty minimal so honestly that's not why I'm pitching but you can um which is what I did because I was never given DVDs of the show so if I have copies for what I need even here to do my channel I I bought a box set which included all nine Seasons plus um an additional one that has all of the reunion TV movies plus a decade of The Waltons which was another special that was done at right at the end I think of season 8 um so you know if if you have a Christmas wish list and somebody that wants to know what you want perhaps you can put that on your Christmas wish list I have a question here from j r i Jr Judy could you share about any talk show experiences you have had how do you get to appear on a show are you given questions ahead of time any special memories or experiences you recall um I've done a number of talk shows over the years some more prominent than others um I haven't done any of the like big nighttime ones you know like in our day Johnny Carson or things like that did a lot of afternoon ones like uh Mike Douglas M Griff and dinosaur um and some of the morning ones you know the Today Show and then in a lot of other cities have traveled a lot doing PR and and interviews and stuff uh so those can come from a number of different uh Avenues when we were doing the series uh they would often come through the CBS press Department uh I know I was sent out on some press junkets at times to do press with um the local affiliates for CBS uh because that was a way for them to help promote the show and then uh later on I had a press agent um and my publicist that my would uh get calls or would also you know promote me to different shows as a potential guest so and that was also how I ended up doing a lot of game shows and uh competition shows like Battle of the Network stars or circus of the Stars those types of things they would know when things were happening and they would promote their various different clients who were interested and willing to do those things and um you know because they were interacting on behalf of a number of clients you know they would have an opportunity to to pitch you uh you know they represented a lot of other actors who were on TV shows at that time uh so that's kind of how they came about and depending on the show sometimes there would be a pre-interview where I would talk with um the sort of talent coordinator for the show uh who would ask me different questions and just do sort of a pre-interview to determine because the segments tend to be really short um so you might have three to 10 minutes max you know or sometimes you did your segment but then you stayed while some other people were interviewed but typically at those points you tended to just be a guest and not necessarily getting engaged all that much with somebody else's interview time um I also co-hosted one show for a week in the afternoon we I think uh we shot might have shot multiple segments but in one day but I don't remember I wasn't so good at that at that time um I think I would be much better at it now because I've had all this experience on my channel here in um interviewing people and knowing um what sorts of U questions I'd be interested in asking so at that point I didn't do a lot of real research on the people um and I sort of let the host of the show predominantly roll with it uh so uh if I don't if something doesn't include a pre- interiew then I usually usually you go on because you're promoting something so of course if I was promoting The Waltons then we'd talk about The Waltons and I would just answer whatever questions they had or if it was important to because there was a specific thing that I had done that I wanted to promote then the show would know that because my publicist would have sent them information in my bio and sort of a press release about what it was I was promoting uh so it was pretty easy to do uh we very soon became rather seasoned professionals at doing interviews you know so sometimes they'd catch you off guard with some question or sometimes they'd ask you to participate in something that was you know a little awkward or whatever but um mostly uh they were pretty straight ahead I I don't remember any real standout uh moments or or questions um so uh I don't I don't have any great talk show stories I I remember when we were doing John Wamsley and I went out and did um a press junket for CBS for The Waltons one season I just remember we were doing a lot of promos for the show where you know it might be like hi I'm Judy Norton or you know I play Mary Ellen and this is John Wamsley and he plays Jason and we you know we're at please watch The Waltons on CBS at 8:00 P.M on and whatever their local channel was so doing those types of things and there was one time where there was just some very bizarre sort of Copy Copy being what what it was they wanted us to read so they'd give us stuff to read and they were pretty short so we could kind of memorize it but one of them just some of these stuck with me because they were so strange like one of them was something like did you ever wonder if when a Walton leaves Walton's Mountain they wither up and die well we're all alive and well on you know CBS and blah blah blah it was just like what that was just like that one struck me as as probably more peculiar than most of them so that's probably my my oddest talk show story that's what I have for you for this segment of ask Judy if you're enjoying these please do hit like And subscribe and I'll see you next time for more behind the scenes of The Waltons thanks for watching

Channel: Judy Norton

Views: 19,725

Keywords: The Waltons, Judy Norton, Judy Norton behind the scenes, Waltons full episodes, Ask Judy Norton Taylor, Richard Thomas, John Boy Walton, Michael Learned, Olivia Walton, Ralph Waite, John Walton, Will Geer, Ellen Corby, Mary Ellen Walton, Kami Cotler, Waltons on talk shows, Elizabeth Walton, Jon Walmsley, Mary McDonough, Eric Scott, David Harper, Walton House, Grandpa Walton, Grandma Walton, youtube, Classic TV, goodnight John Boy, Ask Judy, Earl Hamner Jr., 70’s TV

Id: C5Z8w04o-kI

Length: 9min 43sec (583 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024