It seems as though E! News might not have a healthy respect for the creative comedic process.
For two seasons on MTV, Nikki Glaser and fellow comedian Sara Schaefer co-hosted Nikki & Sara Live, which put a comedic and often satirical spin on entertainment news shows like E! News. Earlier today, Glaser tweeted out the following:
So, @ENews blatantly stole a bit from my old MTV show. It feels really shitty. Us: http://t.co/6xC4KuGBmN Them: http://t.co/XzqrdcbBun
— Nikki Glaser (@NikkiGlaser) January 30, 2014
If you watch the two videos, the idea and execution is the same: put an on-screen counter in the corner and track how many times the interviewer touches the celebrities on the red carpet. The only difference is that Glaser and Schaefer did the funny segment back in April of last year during the 2013 MTV Movie Awards– and ran up a much higher touch count than E! host Giuliana Rancic by the way.
“I’m not particularly worried about this poor imitation having much of an impact on anyone’s life,” Schaefer tells Laughspin. “It just sucks that someone out there is getting paid to be so utterly lazy.” It’s hard to tell who is accountable for the segment as the show does not have specific writers’ credits on the E! website or on IMDB.com (other than a list of ‘unknown episodes’ writers). “Everyone at our show worked very hard to make a show that was original, creative, and funny…and because our show was cancelled, this feels a little like someone is feeding off of our carcass,” Schaefer says.
At the time of this writing, E! News had not immediately responded to our request for comment.
Watch the two videos below and decide for yourself (Safari viewers may experience trouble viewing the E! video):
Nikki & Sara Live at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards:
E! News at the Grammys:
Back in July, Glaser explained the bit was one of her favorite things from season one of Nikki & Sara Live. Here’s what she said:
I think the most exciting thing was for sure when we did interviews at the MTV Movie Awards. We were on the red carpet and we were doing a bit where we were trying to touch as many celebrities as possible. That was our last episode and it really felt fitting because we finally found the type of thing we always want to be doing on the show. That last episode felt like such a great mix of everything we want to do– it was all over the place but it was really fun. We were doing this bit but we didn’t tell anyone we were doing it and we were touching all these people. But then Steve Carell came up and we only had a few seconds with him so we had to tell him what we were doing. We said, ‘We’re doing this bit and we just want you to freak out, like do something weird.’ And he was like great! He agreed to do the bit, so it was amazing and hilarious. It was a dream come true to do a bit with Steve Carell.
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