Graham Norton has named the worst guest that has ever appeared on his chat show.
The presenter hosts BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show on Friday evenings, and during an event last year to promote his book Forever Home, Norton said that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein proved to be his “least favourite” guest to appear on his series.
“I often talk around who my least favourite guest was, but now, someone reminded me, I have a really good answer to this now. It’s Harvey Weinstein,” he revealed (via Evening Standard).
“He’s in jail, so he gets the prize for the worst guest ever,” Norton added, recalling how Weinstein “asked for his email” and wanted to be on the show, before eventually landing a spot on a 2015 episode.
“He emailed me something very nice, a complimentary thing,” Norton explained. “And then he decided he wanted to be on the show because he was going to promote something.
“And it was a show that was fully booked, so I replied saying, ‘Oh, thank you so much, but the show is fully booked’. He emailed back, ‘What if I blah de blah de blah?’ ‘No, the show is fully booked, blah de blah.’
Recommended
“And he emailed back again, ‘But I think…,’ and I just had to turn to my booker and say, ‘Can you please deal with this?’ And at the time, I thought that sort of attitude, that kind of, ‘Oh no, I’m going on,’ that is what makes you a very good producer.
“But of course, now that we know what we know, that is what makes him a predator. It was that kind of weird, tunnel-vision thing,” Norton added, reflecting on how it “was sort of chilling in retrospect, because I was just laughing at those emails”.
“But you realise, oh my God, that is an insight into how that man is.”
Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence after being convicted in 2020 of two counts of rape and sexual assault in New York. Earlier in 2023, he was sentenced to 16 additional years in prison, which came three months after being convicted on three counts of rape and sexual assault.