Interview: John O'Hurley Goes to the Dogs

To most television viewers, John O’Hurley (photo credit, Virginia Sherwood/NBC) is best known for his role of J. Peterman on “Seinfeld,” or his nearly 12-year daytime-television career on shows including “The Young and the Restless,” “All My Children,” “Loving,” “Santa Barbara” and “The Edge of Night,” or being crowned the ultimate champion on the very first season of “Dancing With the Stars.” However, this is the time of year when John goes to the dogs — literally.

On Thanksgiving Day, from noon to 2 p.m. in all time zones (directly following the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade), John will be hosting the ninth annual “National Dog Show Presented by Purina” on NBC. And believe me, they didn’t have to twist his arm to get him to return to his hosting duties!

Daytime Dial: I know you’re a dog lover, but what are some particular aspects about “The National Dog Show Presented by Purina” that keep you coming back?

John O’Hurley: Well, I think for us it’s the happiest day of the year. We go there, and we are surrounded by 2,000 dogs. Our favorite time is not really what’s going on in the ring there, but rather when my wife and I take a walk backstage and see all the breeders and all the dogs, and walking up and down the aisles. It’s pretty spectacular to see 165 different breeds.

DD: Now, I know you already know quite a bit about dogs, being a dog owner and all, but you must learn a lot more about them just through your hosting duties.

JO: Well, thank goodness I have David Frei with me, who is the most knowledgeable man in the world of dogs, and there’s nothing he does not know about them. So a little of that has rubbed off on me in a good way.

DD: I’m excited that this year they are introducing a bunch of new dog breeds. Especially the Cane Corso, which is a mammoth but is the sweetest dog in the world, and also the Bluetick Coonhound. What are you excited about?

JO: Definitely that! We did our photo session, and David and I — you want to talk about never working with kids or animals! — we had to work with all six of them. To try to get one photo together, it took nearly four hours. It is exciting to introduce that many new breeds, and they are all beautiful dogs.

DD: What part of the actual hosting duties do you look forward to most when you do this?

JO: My favorite part is when the Irish Setter comes into the ring. It represents to me what a beautiful dog should look like. The way the hair is cut — it’s such an athletic movement when the dog comes in, and it’s just beautiful to me. So I always look for the Irish Setter.

DD: This show always has such a huge audience. We’re pushing 20 million viewers. To what do you attribute its great success?

JO: Well, I think it’s an extraordinary piece of programming. This is a great show on a family day. If you put this show on any other time of the week, I don’t think it would do near as well. It just happens to be sitting there on the perfect family day and gives something that everybody wants to watch. Rather than football, which is regional and certainly male-oriented. But this is a show that the family can watch.

DD: You had told me in one of our previous interviews that your son, William, loves to accompany you, loves to be involved backstage. Will we see him again this year?

JO: Yep, he’ll be there. He’s very excited. He loves going to the show.

DD: It’s like a kid in a candy store, except with dogs.

JO: It really is. Since this is a benched show — and I think you know what that means — it means they all have to stay there through the entire show. It’s one of the great events for parents to bring children to. If you go backstage, you’ll see a lot of the attending audiences are parents and kids. It’s just a wonderful idea to bring them up and down so they can see all the different breeds. They can talk to the breeders and get some tips if they are in the market for a pet. Then they’ll get the right answers about whether this dog actually parallels their lifestyle, which is really the message we try to get out every year.

DD: On another subject, I personally would like to start a campaign now for you, as a song-and-dance man with a wicked sense of humor, that you need to guest-star on “Glee.”

JO: Well, isn’t that funny. They’ve been talking about it, as kind of a family member or love interest for Sue (Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch). And I think between the two of us, we would actually corner the market on arrogance and pomposity.

DD: Well, I’m going to help forward that campaign. I think that would be wonderful. I thought that was my original idea, but I’m glad to see that other people are thinking the same way!

JO: Actually, a dear friend of mine had dinner with two of the producers and they said they had already reached that idea.

DD: I know that Steve Harvey is doing a bang-up job hosting “Family Feud” now, but I still get tons of letters from my readers telling me that they still miss having you as the host.

JO: Oh, how sweet.

DD: What do you miss most about the show, and what could you say to my readers who miss you?

JO: Well, I had a wonderful time with that. But they wanted to move the show to Orlando, and with my child responsibilities here, that just wasn’t going to happen. So, I have to look at it as four phenomenal years, and I miss the show dearly, but it frees me up to do so many other things. I’m back on Broadway and will be heading back to Broadway again, and those are things that I just couldn’t do as freely when I was committed to “Family Feud.”

DD: What are you going to be doing on Broadway? Is it finalized yet?

JO: I just finished “Chicago,” and I probably will head back over the holidays to do another stint in “Chicago.” And then I have another tentative long-term offer to do another show there, but that one I can’t talk about just yet.

DD: Like most of America, I’m a huge “Dancing With the Stars” fan, and I was mortified by Bruno’s comments to your friend Michael Bolton. I was just wondering what your reaction was to that?

JO: I love Bruno. And I think his color on the show helps the show along a lot. I mean he really should be outrageous. However, my concern is when your comments become mean-spirited like that. And I think it was a mean-spirited comment. I think if he had to do it over again, he probably would have put the words back in his mouth. But my concern is that agents who protect their clients, and especially high-profile clients, will think twice now about allowing their clients to do the show. That’s my concern. That show lives and breathes on the back and the sweat of the people doing the show. It doesn’t live on the comments of the judges. So I think they need to remember that every time they make a comment like that. If they want to continue to get high-profile people — which is really what drives that show — encourage, don’t discourage.

DD: I agree. You can be critical with your comments, but they need to be constructive and affirming.

JO: Absolutely — the judges are there to help, not belittle. Michael worked really, really hard. That weekend Michael was doing the show, he was also flying around doing concerts and doing his charity golf tournament, all at the exact same time. And he was still able to fit the rehearsals in during all of that. I mean, he was just like triple-tasking that week. And I don’t think the comments were really indicative of the work that Michael put in. I just think they were wrong.

Interview: Soap Stars Share the Magic of the Holiday Season, Part 2

Allyson Rice (ex-Connor, “As the World Turns”): I LOVE Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday. I put up an absurd amount of lights in my yard and on my house, including an 8-foot-tall inflated Santa on the roof. They go up immediately after Halloween (none of this after-Thanksgiving nonsense!). Starting last year, I decorate my car in lights as well. I wrap about four strands of multicolored lights all over it and plug them into an adapter inside the car. I have actually started to keep lights up in my house and one strand on the front and back porches throughout the entire year now. It just makes me happy to look at them. I say, Why limit the wonderful festive feeling of the season to only a month or two out of the year? I also make handmade Christmas balls (pictured) that we decorate our tree with, and I give them to family members as Christmas gifts. My grandmother started the tradition, and my dad and I, and now my youngest niece, are the ones who have kept it going, thanks to my mom’s encouragement after my grandmother passed away. I put up an art studio in my backyard earlier this year, where I have all my jewelry-making supplies, and I’ve set aside one corner of the place for my Christmas-ball-decorating supplies as well, so that I can make them year-round, whenever the inspiration hits. And of course I play the Christmas playlist I created on my iPod while I make them (I have more than 400 Christmas songs on it!).

Kassie DePaiva (Blair, “One Life to Live”): Normally I spend Christmas up in the Catskills with my immediate family, and between Christmas and New Year’s, I have cousins who come up from Atlanta with their children, and we just sit by the fire, play in the snow, snow-ski, and just eat, drink and be merry. It’s all a very fun, family time that has become tradition for the past 15 years. Usually there’s a lot of good snow, and there is always a lot of good fun.

Mario Lopez (ex-Christian, “The Bold and the Beautiful”): I spend the holidays with my family. It’s family and friends and a lot of food, a lot of cocktails and a lot of love.

Murray Bartlett (Cyrus, “Guiding Light”): It’s about being with family. I usually spend the holidays with family. Because it’s the middle of the summer in December in Australia, I’ll spend the holidays with family on a beach or something. It’s beautiful where we go — there’s the beach and the ocean, there’s tropical rainforests. Also, I remember back in 2000, I rang in the new millennium on a sand dune with my best friends. We just hung out there and waited for the New Year. That is my perfect kind of holiday.

James Reynolds (Abe, “Days of Our Lives”): Every Christmas when my son was young was a special Christmas. A child’s excitement on Christmas morning goes deeper than just getting things. There is a sense of magic and fantasy in the anticipation of this special day.

John O’Hurley (ex-Jim, “The Young and the Restless”): We are developing a family tradition. We just bought a place up in Vermont in an effort to return to authenticity. We’re now going to be spending our holidays up there; it’ll be our return to an authentic Christmas. It’s going to be spent in Vermont rather than L.A. I think Vermont is such a beautiful state, and the holidays are more special up there.

Interview: John O'Hurley Talks Dogs

(John O'Hurley and friend, a Dogue de Bordeaux. Photo Credit: Mitch Haaseth/NBC)

To most television viewers, John O’Hurley is best known for his role of J. Peterman on Seinfeld or his nearly 12-year daytime-television career on shows including The Young and the Restless, All My Children, Loving, Santa Barbara and The Edge of Night. However, this is the time of year when John goes to the dogs — literally.

On Thanksgiving Day, from noon to 2 p.m. in all time zones (directly following the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade), John will be hosting the 7th Annual National Dog Show Presented by Purina on NBC. John is more than eager to begin his annual hosting duties.

“I am very excited, because we have about 2,000 dogs this year,” John says. “I just did a photo shoot with the Dogue de Bordeaux, a French Mastiff, which is a new breed they are introducing, and it is an absolutely precious dog. It has the face of a Shar-Pei and the body of a Mastiff. They are enormous dogs, but they are as sweet as can be.

“Two of the best in the country were here (for the photo shoot), so I am excited to see how they do among all the other dogs here. I love seeing a new breed introduced, because it brings out all of the breeders to the show to see how theirs match up.”

John himself is definitely a dog man. “Our family has two brand-new ones this year. We lost one of our dogs; we lost little Betty, who was the inspiration for the first book that I wrote (“It’s Okay to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons I Learned From Dogs”). But we have two others: a little cavalier King Charles and a little Havanese. So we have two brand-new breeds in the house, and they go along with our 18-and-a-half-year-old Maltese, Scoshi.”

John’s 2-year-old son, William, is a chip off the old block when it comes to dogs. John tells me: “He is great around dogs. ‘The Dog Show’ is just a wonderful day for him; he gets to wander and look at all the cages and all of the dogs. It’s such a special event for him.”

This special event has become quite a family event for the O’Hurleys. John explains: “We always find a way to put William in the show somehow. It adds a family element to a family day, and that’s really what the show is about. It doesn’t have the pretense of other shows. As much as it is a formal show event, and certainly one of the two top dog shows in the country, we try to keep the presentation of it as a fun family event. So if you’re watching on the greatest family day of the year, you have a chance to watch something that is very family-friendly.”

When it comes to dogs, John knows his facts: “People don’t realize the depth of the AKC registration. There are more than 165 different breeds that are recognized, and all of these have a history as to their function. ‘The Dog Show’ really is a celebration of the history of breeding.

“These days we celebrate dogs as pets, but they weren’t always pets. Dogs were a function: You needed them to hunt, to retrieve, to do farm work or for the simple act of keeping you warm. Many of these smaller breeds were bred for warmth, back when there were no heaters — the early Chinese were breeding dogs for that reason. So there’s a wonderful history of breeding, and ‘The Dog Show’ is a wonderful way to celebrate the tradition and the depth of the history.”

John has been hosting the show since its beginning in 2002, and he looks forward to it every year. John says: “We present one of the most enjoyable events, I feel, that is on television all year long, and I would never give it up.”

ABC to Announce Latest Dancing With the Stars Lineup

On Monday, Aug. 25, the latest batch of celebs to grace the Dancing With the Stars stage will be announced during Good Morning America. Since many soap stars, past and present, have been a part of the show, I felt it only appropos that I make the announcement here.

Who do you think should put on his/her dancing shoes, a la Cameron Mathison, Jennie Garth, Ian Ziering, John O'Hurley, Lissa Rinna, and the original dancing diva and Season One winner, Kelly Monaco?

Post your suggestions in the comments section of who you'd like to see on the DWTS stage come Monday, Sept. 22, when the show enters its 7th season.