Candice Bergen says that CBS’ Murphy Brown is aiming to change the public’s perception of the press in an era when the president of the United States is calling the Fourth Estate the “enemy of the people.”
In a sit-down with The Late Show on Wednesday night, the star of the original 1988-1998 series and the 2018 revival revealed to host Stephen Colbert what has changed between the first series and the reboot. “There was no social media and people still had respect for the press, they weren’t the ‘enemy of the people,'” Bergen said, quoting a frequent slogan of President Donald Trump. “So that’s a big change. We’re trying to restore the respect for the press, for certain parts of the press.”
The first episode of the Murphy Brown reboot, which will premiere on CBS on Thursday, sees Bergen’s Brown get into a Twitter battle with the president. “We wasted no time,” Bergen joked.
“It’s the most plausible story I can think of,” Colbert quipped back.
Bergen was frank about how the Trump White House resuscitated the show during her appearance, telling Colbert, “What can I say? We wouldn’t have come back if the election [didn’t happen.] It’s really the only thing I owe the president.”
Still, the show retains much of its original DNA from the original series, which spanned the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies. While Brown’s show is a morning news show in this iteration, the same core cast returns in 2018, with only three new additions, Bergen says.
Colbert spent a good deal of time asking Bergen about her one date with Trump, which she went on when she was an 18-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania. “I might have invented this, because it’s so perfect, but I think he was wearing a burgundy suit, a burgundy vest, burgundy patent-leather shoes and had a burgundy limousine. It was kind of a burgundy symphony,” Bergen recalled.
“Like a big bruise,” Colbert joked. The actress said she didn’t remember how she first met Trump, which Colbert said would probably disappoint the president.
The late-night host also asked Bergen about her one date with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, which took place at one of her parent’s star-studded parties. When asked who was a better date, Trump or Kissinger, Bergen replied, without hesitation, “Kissinger.”
