The Christopher Walken cooking show that almost was: “Maybe a showgirl chopping my vegetables”
Whether fronted by a celebrity or not, there are too many cooking shows on TV, and the last thing the world needs is another one. However, if the celebrity fronting the cooking show in question was Christopher Walken, it would be an entirely different matter.
He’s never played himself in a movie, and the only time he’s appeared on television without playing a character is on Saturday Night Live, so reality TV isn’t in his wheelhouse. He doesn’t watch it, either, apart from when he was mistakenly channel-hopping and found a series he instantly abhorred with every fibre of being, so it would have been unusual to begin with since it was so far out of his comfort zone.
Then, there’s the prospect of actually watching Christopher Walken cook. “Preheat…. your OVEN… and remember that it’ll be. A lot. FASTER! If…. you prepare. Your mise en place. Beforehand,” or something along those lines, since his one-of-a-kind cadence is virtually impossible to write down and do justice.
The Academy Award-winning veteran has been involved in a couple of kitchen-related skits, but the prospect of him hosting an entire series dedicated to the culinary arts is suitably mouth-watering. Not only because he’s Christopher Walken, but because it would be guaranteed insanity from start to finish, especially if the bells and whistles he dreamed of adding would have made it to air.
What would a Walkenised cooking show look like, you may wonder? Imagine a cross between the standard format and an anarchic comedy series full of skits, asides, larger-than-life characters, musicians, and even scantily-clad women, because why the hell not, and you’ve got half an idea of what he had planned.
“I almost did a cooking show,” he told The Observer, dangling the dream in front of everyone before ripping it away. “I went to Bravo and MTV, and the Comedy Channel. I had meetings with these people, and I was going to do this show. It was either ten or 12 segments. I can’t remember. I was going to have some sort of kitchen setup.”
You can’t make a cooking show without the apparatus to cook with, Mr Walken, so we get that. What else? “I wanted it to be a little like Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” he offered. “I love that show. And I’d have maybe a showgirl, you know, with a little thing on, chopping my vegetables. Maybe some musicians. And an audience. Some people to talk to.”
In what must be a crime against television, Walken met with three different potential suitors about hosting a cooking programme inspired by Paul Reubens’ madcap Pee-wee’s Playhouse that would feature musical interludes, a live audience, special guests, and potentially even a vegetable-chopping showgirl, and none of them were interested.
It could have been the greatest show in small-screen history, if only for the sheer batshit insanity of it all. Whoever told the eccentric icon that they weren’t interested in making his dream a reality should hang their head in shame, since audiences were robbed of what would have almost certainly been a fever dream made real.
