A toast from Ellie Kemper
How we helped the beloved comic actor shine on Letterman
America’s Sweetheart… is there anyone who doesn’t love Ellie Kemper? Her performance as Erin on The Office was marvel enough, with its combination of sparky enthusiasm and vulnerable awkwardness, shot through with moments of darkness, executed with the precision of a born comedian. Then she did at all again, but even better, as the title character in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Yes, everyone loves Ellie Kemper - except, she worried, the one person she most wanted to: David Letterman. Kemper wrote in the New York Times that “Since high school, I have — and I need to say this carefully, because I am now married — deeply admired David Letterman. Every weeknight, my sister Carrie and I would meet in the kitchen to eat ice cream and let this goofball genius and fellow Midwesterner shape our worldview. This crush wasn’t complicated: Dave just made us laugh.”
When Kemper herself ascended to stardom and was invited onto Letterman’s show, she was haunted by the fear that she’d commit “the worst crime… being boring”, like the “chatterbox starlets whose stories went nowhere.” After two appearances which Kemper is far too hard on herself about - she said they were “fine” and “B-plus”, but she was charming as always - she was offered a spot during the run-up to Letterman’s retirement in 2015.
“For my final appearance on his show, I wanted to do something memorable,” she wrote in the Times. “This idea rested in the pages of an old Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.”
“Seized by an uncharacteristic decisiveness,” she ordered The Selfie Toaster. This bygone Hammacher product included two custom-made heating elements in the shape of whatever portraits you uploaded. Kemper chose Letterman and his bandleader Paul Shaffer, and brought the toaster on the show.
“He plopped the toaster on his desk, and I inserted two slices of potato bread,” Kemper writes. “As Paul played some light piano accompaniment, Dave and I watched the toaster for a good two and a half minutes. That was precisely the idea: to waste several minutes of national airtime watching bread toast.
“Miraculously, when the toast popped out, you could make out Dave’s and Paul’s faces. Dave offered some jam and butter, and the three of us ate the most delicious meal of my life.”
Letterman, of course, has his own history with Hammacher Schlemmer. We sent representatives onto his NBC show several times in the early ‘80s to demonstrate some of the more peculiar contrivances in our inventory at the time. I’m currently trying to track down clips of those appearances - watch this space for more. (And if you can help, please email me.)
Which makes Kemper’s much later appearance a bookend of sorts. Making selfie toast with Letterman, Kemper told Vogue, was “like a dream. It’s the happiest I’ve ever been.” After all the joy her performances have brought us, we’re delighted to return the favor. As for the toaster? “I will be making that toast every morning,” she said. “That’s not creepy, right?”
And if you like Gnomenclature, you should know about Shoddy Goods, Jason’s other newsletter. It tells similar stories about consumer culture and history, but drawn from the rest of the world outside Hammacher Schlemmer. It’s about as fun as your Inbox can get.