Producer (22 page)

L
arry King is a true icon who is known the world over. He is instantly recognizable by his face and his voice, and I feel privileged
to be an integral part of his life and his extraordinary career. He just makes it look so easy. No matter whom we put on the
show, no matter how Larry feels personally about someone, he is masterful at setting aside his feelings so his guests always
get a fair shake during the hour.

One of his most impressive qualities, arguably the backbone of his success, is that when the spotlight starts to shine on
him, he immediately brings the attention back to his current guest. This is a rare quality in a talk-show host. Larry
never
tries to skew the show to be about him as he asks direct questions, he listens to the answers, and he doesn’t judge. He really
is an egoless interviewer who gets right to the point. When there’s a breaking news story, if we have five inroads by which
to cover it, Larry tackles the topic with gusto, and together we figure out which road to take. He eats these challenges up,
he always has, something I saw in him when we first met seventeen years ago.

The White House producer job had been my dream, and it had taken me all over the world for a decade. During this time, I met
a number of world leaders and I stood beside President Reagan in the Far East when he visited the Great Wall of China. I saw
and heard him exhort Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. I accompanied President George H. W. Bush when he ate
Thanksgiving dinner with the troops in the Persian Gulf. I saw Clinton elected, I testified in court, and I was on call twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week, for a decade. When it was time to meet Larry to talk about being his executive producer, I
was ready to make a change. Actually, I’d been on alert for the right opportunity for some time, since my White House job
would be a hard act to follow.

While I waited for the proposed meeting between Larry and me, I understood that interviewing a baseball great every night
would have been his dream come true. Since Larry describes himself quite simply as “a Jewish guy who loves sports,” he had
his heart set on filling the empty producing spot with another “Jewish guy who loves sports.” He had even found someone he
was considering, so it’s a good thing Larry didn’t know how disconnected from baseball I really was.

Several years earlier, in 1983, I had been Dean Reynolds’s White House producer when he was CNN White House correspondent.

Dean, a baseball freak like Larry, took me to a game in Baltimore where we were sitting with a load of VIPs. Clearly in his
element, Dean was very excited, and at one point, he asked me if I wanted a hot dog.

“Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’ll wait until halftime.”

He looked around to see if anyone else had heard my ignorant comment and then he looked at me like he had no idea who I was.
At that moment, I realized that he and I would
never make it as a couple because I had no idea that baseball had a seventh-inning stretch instead of a halftime. Believe
me, I have never told Larry that story (until now), because there is no way he would get the humor in it. Rather, he might
see it as violation of his chosen religion—baseball.

But I didn’t let my baseball-challenged personality deter me. It was obvious Larry and I were polar opposites, which could
work in our favor. If he and I were exactly alike, I reasoned, the show’s topics could get boring and so could our relationship.
As opposites, we would bring different things to the table and it would never get humdrum.

When the big meeting was approaching, I knew Larry was only seeing me to placate Tom Johnson (then CNN boss), but I also knew
that I was far more qualified for the job than his other pick. Since I loved a good challenge and I really wanted the job,
I kicked in and made a concerted push.

Before the meeting, I contacted some of the most influential people in my life so far, such as Ethel Kennedy, financier T.
Boone Pickens, and George Bush, Sr., to name a few. I asked them to write recommendation letters for me and send them to Larry.
They all complied. Gail Evans, who was head of CNN’s central booking unit at the time, touted me to Tom Johnson who was already
pulling for me, so I had a lot of allies. Still, as a blonde WASP female with little to no interest in baseball, I knew I
had to overcome the “Jewish sports guy.”

“I already have someone I want,” Larry told me immediately when we sat down for coffee at Duke’s Restaurant for the very first
time.

“Okay,” I said, not appearing concerned. I was ready for him.

“But I did get your letters of recommendation,” he added.

“Oh, good,” I said. “What did you think?”

“I was impressed with the number of influential people you know and how they feel about you,” he said.

“Would you like more?” I asked him.

He looked deeply impressed as I went on to explain to him how much I wanted this job, what I was willing to put into it, and
how much I disliked losing anything. He sat back, smiled broadly, and said, “I don’t need any more letters. I just made up
my mind. The job is yours.”

Larry swears to this day that when I offered more endorsements, that did it for him. I believe he gave me the job when he
saw how badly I wanted it and how competitive I truly was. And my contacts didn’t hurt a bit, either. When a host of a show
is shopping for an executive producer, he and his pick are entering into a sort of marriage, in which they agree to talk several
times a day every day, to make decisions, and to work out compromises together. The host needs to know that the producer is
loyal, something that can only be proven with time, but he also needs her to be effective on the phone and to be on top of
whatever is going on at any given moment. Basically, a host needs to know that his executive producer can pull off whatever
she needs to, has all the right contacts, and always has his best interests at heart. I think Larry realized on that day that
not only could I do these things but that I was eager, I had a healthy competitive edge, and I was ready to go forward right
away. And did I have contacts!

As I began my new job, two things were foremost in my mind. The first was getting to know Larry, since he was so different
from me. I needed for us to build trust, and I worked on balancing the two distinct parts of my job that sometimes clashed:
doing what was right for the network and doing what was right for Larry. Today, I’m one of the few people who can say pretty
much anything to Larry without offending him.
He trusts me totally because he has learned that my criticisms come from a good place. And I always make sure he remembers
how much I admire his work. That’s easy because I don’t think anybody else can do what he does, and I respect him for his
ability to show up every night and give it all he’s got. People are eager to criticize him, because when he slips up, he does
it publicly. But how many people do you know who could do a live show for an hour, five nights a week, for twenty-five years?
Actually, no one. In fact, Larry just made
Guinness World Records
for the longest-running show with the same host in the same time slot on the same network!

Second only to getting to know my new boss was finding great guests for the show. Fate was in my corner, since two of my closest
friends in the world are Palestinians named Sabih and Hani Masri, part of a famous Palestinian family who are as wealthy and
influential as the Kennedys are in the United States. It just so happened that the Masris were close to Yasser Arafat, Palestinian
leader and chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Arafat was labeled a terrorist in America, and I wondered
what Larry would think if I got him an interview with Yasser Arafat himself? He never did interviews, but I had an in.

I had always considered Arafat to be one of the bad guys, and now I had the unique opportunity to hear about Israeli-Palestinian
issues from a different perspective. I learned a great deal about those issues from the inside.

As we began to negotiate the terms to have Yasser Arafat as a guest on
Larry King Live
, I became privy to the security machinations that were necessary to keep this man safe. He feared assassination most of the
time, so it was not uncommon for him to be moved from one place to the next several times during a night. I recall being at
Hani’s Washington home
where Arafat was staying. We had a Zen moment when we saw his outfit with his red headpiece folded on the bed, ready for a
quick exit to the next place. Needless to say, his security detail was so rigid that it was difficult to get him to agree
to an interview.

We got him, though, and Larry was excited. I could actually say that Larry was thrilled since all the other networks wanted
this interview so much. I impressed Larry with this fantastic “get,” and we were off and running.

Everyone agrees that Larry and I are an interesting team, mainly because we are so different. But we have enough mutual respect
to get along with each other and hear what the other has to say. There are days that Larry would prefer not to do a certain
interview and I have to explain to him why I booked it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, at the end of such a show, he tells
me, “Now I get why you booked that guest.” We usually see eye to eye in the end, we talk several times every day, and we tell
each other that we love each other nearly every time we talk.

What most people don’t know about Larry is that he can feel anxious when he’s off the air. Imagine walking down the street
and a perfect stranger calls out, “Hey, do you think the Lakers are going to win?” Everyone thinks they know Larry, and he
tries to accommodate them by being kind and giving them an answer. But it does create stress that he has to combat. When he’s
on the air, though, something overtakes him. It’s as if a miracle happens and he is endlessly patient, he sits still with
no problem, and he feels and looks utterly comfortable in his own skin—characteristics of a true professional.

Of course, there are many times when Larry and I don’t agree. And there are times when we tease each other. He may
call and say, “Wendy, we’re doing a show about Manny Ramirez tonight, right?”

“No, Larry,” I’ll answer. “We’re working on getting the octomom.”

“You’re kidding,” he’ll say.

“Yes, I’m kidding,” I’ll answer.

Our shared sense of humor, one of the few things about us that is similar, keeps us laughing at each other and ourselves.
I remember a party at Larry’s house when, out of the blue, Don Rickles said Larry looked like a “Jew Buick.” Larry and I laughed
our heads off.

Today, when I think about our long and enduring friendship and business partnership, I believe that our diversity is the secret
to our success. It’s been working for years and years, and Larry and I both acknowledge that we are each other’s longest relationship
(without sex) to date.

Over the many years we’ve worked together, we’ve gone through a great many personal changes and we’ve always been there for
each other. He was thrilled when my children came into my life, and I was there when Larry got engaged a couple of times and
finally when he married his wonderful wife, Shawn Southwick, who gave him his two youngest boys. In fact, I was in the room
with Shawn and Larry when they were born, which went way beyond my job description!

When Larry got interested in Shawn initially, he came on very strong in his usual fashion. He had known her a short time when
he called me one day and said, “Wendy, I’m so crazy about this girl. Would you call and tell her that all the stories about
my marriages are exaggerated? Tell her I was only married four times instead of seven.”

I knew Shawn, I liked her, I considered her an intelligent
woman, and I had no interest in lying to her. At the same time, I needed to placate Larry, so I got her on the phone at 4
a.m., Pacific time. “Shawn,” I said, “I’m really sorry to be doing this, but I’m supposed to tell you that Larry has only
been married four times.”

“Oh, my God,” she said with a laugh.

“Well,” I said, “I’m just the messenger.”

From the moment I met Shawn, I had a good feeling about her. I recall early on, when she and I were sitting in a limo together,
facing each other. Shawn, an absolutely beautiful woman, was touching up her makeup with some blemish concealer. I was wearing
a pair of sandals when she suddenly reached over without missing a beat in our conversation and applied some concealer to
a scar I have on my second toe. A moment later, she stopped and said, “Oh, my God, I just did that without asking you or thinking.”

“I know,” I said as we both burst out laughing. She is a girl’s girl and it was instinctual in her to take care of me, too,
while she was doing the finishing touches on her own makeup. We bonded over my toe and we laugh about it to this day.

Despite the number of his previous marriages, Shawn, thirty-seven, and Larry, sixty-three, were engaged in record time and
the wedding was planned for September 4, 1997. It was going to be a lavish affair at a friend’s luxurious home, but while
we were in Los Angeles preparing for the wedding, Larry woke up one morning and didn’t feel well.

Ever since his open-heart surgery about a decade prior, Larry had been in close touch with his body and he knew when something
was wrong. That morning, I went to his LA doctor with him, who agreed that something was off with Larry’s heart. But when
he suggested a second open-heart surgery, Larry was hoping for something less invasive. Since he
had another set of doctors in New York who had performed his original open-heart surgery, he also called them.

His brilliant surgeon, Dr. Wayne Isom, a man missing a thumb, was a calming force in Larry’s life. I recall a great story
that Larry tells in his biography about the night before his first surgery, in New York. When Dr. Isom showed up and began
tapping his chest, Larry noticed that this man, who had operated on David Letterman and Walter Cronkite, had a stub for a
right thumb.