When one is bringing a new entertainment product into the marketplace, one must do promotion. Some pretend to love it (and maybe some actually do) and some go kicking and screaming. Sometimes, though, we get a glimpse a larger truth. The utter exhaustion; the acceptance, with no anger or judgement; the refusal to fight the tides. When zen-like compliance overcomes the mask of enthusiasm, as it did on Friday when Jimmy Fallon led Steve Buscemi into a caterwauling studio audience to receive a cheap candle, it achieves the level of high art.
Buscemi sat on The Tonight Show’s couch to talk up Miracle Workers: Dark Ages, Simon Rich’s TBS comedy in which Buscemi co-stars with Daniel Radcliffe and Geraldine Viswanathan. But before he could get into it, Fallon rubbed Buscemi’s nose in the cottage industry of unlicensed products featuring his image, for which he is not compensated. To add salt on the wound, Fallon reminded the actor, director and former firefighter that he also did this bit “when you were on last.” That’s right, this is not the first time poor Buscemi was reminded on coast-to-coast television that others are making bank by sticking his face on home goods.
“It’s very nice,” the great actor, who also directed some of the best episodes of The Sopranos as well as the 1996 indie masterpiece Trees Lounge, says when confronted with a flimsily printed rendering of himself as a naked cherub. Fallon also shows him what his face crossed with Baby Yoda would look like.
The first season of Miracle Workers was set in Heaven, and Buscemi played God. Season two features the same actors, but set in the middle ages. Buscemi’s character is named Eddie Shitshoveler, the last name of which describes his occupation.