THE LAST SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN (TRANSCRIPT OF MARG’S INTERVIEW)
April 1, 2009
CBS
David: Our next guest stars on the very popular CBS television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and listen to this, 200th episode tomorrow night on CSI. How about that? 200th episode. Ladies and gentlemen, the always lovely Marg Helgenberger!
David: How ya doing?
Marg: Iām good! Theyāve got a little heavy metal for me.
Paul: A little heavy metal. Yeah, yeah.
Marg: Thank you, Paul.
Paul: āHellās Bellsā.
Marg: Thatās what it was?! I love AC/DC!
Paul: Helgenbergerās Bells.
Marg: You always choose such cool stuff. Thank you! (To Dave) I donāt mean to ignore youā¦
David: Let me know when youāre done talking to the band. (Marg laughs).
Paul: Oh come on, we were just starting to get along.
David: I know, I know.
Marg: That was rude. Iām sorry. I apologize, David.
David: Hey, congratulations. 200th episode. Thatās a big deal, isnāt it? How many seasons is 200 episodes?
Marg: Weāre in our ninth.
David: Oh wow, thatās great. Itās unheard of these days for a show to be onā¦good for you!
Marg: Thank you, thank you.
David: And do you and the castā¦
Marg: How many for you? 27? 21?
David: 27, I donāt know. Yeah, thatās right. 27 years.
Marg: Congratulations!
David: Yeah, but have you seen the show?
Marg: Itās better than ever. (Dave laughs).
David: Now, do you and your castmates celebrate? Do you do something special to commemorate 200 shows?
Marg: Well, CBSā¦they really know how to throw a big barnburner. Yeah, it was cake, sparkling apple cider and a few speeches. (laughs)
David: There you go. You must be doing something right.
Marg: Oh yeah, exactly. Mmmhmmm.
David: I remember this from one of your visits andā¦itās been a while, Iām sorry to say, but I remember this from one of your visitsā¦that youāre from the Midwest, solid Midwest farm country. Iowa?
Marg: Nebraska.
David: Nebraska.
Marg: Yes.
David: So, we had the kid on who was the bagging champion, and I know this about you, that you worked summers and after school, but it wasnāt grocery stores per say, was it? But it was a food industry. Iām right about that, arenāt I?
Marg: Thatās right. Thatās right. I was in meat packing. Yes, I was inā¦for summers, in the summers and Christmas time ā summer relief, season relief. And I did a variety of things. It really sucked, I gotta tell you. I did things like cut abscesses from the chucks of beef.
David: Oh man!
Marg: I pulled gristle and fat off of the assembly line and I was a boner for a while and ummā¦ (audience laughs)
Marg: Yeah.
David: Do you do much boning now?
Marg: (laughs)
David: Thatās awful. Thatās just awful, isnāt it?
Marg: I always keep my knives sharp. (Audience laughs)
David: Marg, letās go back to the abscesses.
Marg: Yeah.
David: I mean, I can deal with the gristle and the bone and the whatever, the sinew ligament stuff, but the abscesses. How often? What description?
Marg: How often would it happen?
David: Yeah.
Marg: I suppose it would happen about three or four times on a shift, and it was pretty gnarly. I mean, it was part of the beef called the chuck, and it would come out on a head rail, and youād just have to ā sometimes youād see it, sometimes you wouldnāt. Youād just kind of take a stab at it and sometimes it would splurt. It was a reallyā¦I donāt mean to be so graphic, but since you askedā¦
David: Woo Hoo! āSometimes it would splurtā (laughs). Clean up on aisle nine! We got a splurting abscess! (Dave and Marg laugh)
David: But no, I know that meat handling and like in slaughterhouses and so forth, is one of the most dangerous occupations you can have. I didnāt know that they turned kids loose on this kind of stuff.
Marg: Believe it or not, yeah they did. I mean, I actually did have one job that was a cushy job. It was working in the room where they actually make boxes because you have to break the meat down and fabricate it, you know.
David: Was it for general shipping purposes?
Marg: Correct, yeah. And I didnāt have to wear the frock and the hard hat. I just wore my jeans and t-shirt, and it was warm in there ā because theyād usually have to keep it cooler temperaturesā¦I—turns out I was allergic to the dust in the cardboard, you know, so I ended up getting hives and it happened to be New Yearās Eve, and I couldnāt go out that nightā¦
David: Oh my God!
Marg: The one cushy job in the Break and Fab department and Iā¦
David: Put you back on the abscess. Splurt! (makes stabbing motion)
Marg: (laughs)
David: You think about how lucky you areā¦I mean, that was a tough thing, whether you knew it or not, and I suppose your folks thought āWell, itās a good way for her to learn the real world, make some moneyā and stuff like that. But thank God, you donāt have to do that with your kids now.
Marg: Thank God. Yes.
David: Weāll be right back here with Marg Helgenberger, ladies and gentlemen.
(commercial break)
David: Yeah. You look lovely, Marg.
Marg: Thank you, David.
David: You have aā¦ we were talking about kids and you haveā¦How old is your son?
Marg: Heās 18.
David: 18 years old. Thatās the same age as the bagging champion.
Marg: Yeah! Yeah. Cute ageā¦
David: And what is he like nowā¦in college?
Marg: Heās a freshman at the University of Indiana.
David: IU. Theyāre in Bloomington, Indiana.
Marg: Hoosier Mama! (audience laughs)
David: What is he studying?
Marg: He is undecided right now.
David: Undecided.
Marg: Yes. He actually was just home for Spring Break.
David: Came home for Spring Break, soā¦I think thatās a good sign.
Marg: Came homeā¦Well yes, I was touched that he wanted to come home as opposed to, you know, Cancun. He called me a few days before he came home and said that he was hoping to ābring home a couple of homiesā, his homiesā¦
David: Homies?
Marg: Homies. Foolsā¦
David: Fools, right.
Marg: Terms of affection, you know.
David: Yeah.
Marg: I said, āwell, how many homies are you talking about?ā He said āuhhh, three?ā I was thinking it was probably more than that, and I said āSure, yeah!ā I always like having a bunch of kids around the house, you know. And he came home sporting a full lumberjack beard andā¦ which was quite freaky, but nonetheless, thatās what happens, right? They group upā¦
David: How many fools?
Marg: Fools. There were three that stayed. Sometimes there would be more, and Iā¦
David: Is that a posse? 3? Is that a posse or not a posse?
Marg: Uhh, usually a posse is larger than that.
David: Yeah, true. So the guys come homeā¦
Marg: They come home and I said, āLook, I was you to have some fun. Youāre on your Spring Break.ā Well, it essentially came to meā¦Spring Break came to me. But his room is up on the second floor, and itās kind of his own little suite. Heās got a bathroom, and a deck, a rooftop deck off of the bathroom. So I said, āYou guys, Iām not going to police you. Have a good time but donāt beā¦donāt do anything stupid.ā Um, so, you know, all night long, it was kids up and down, la la la, right and I just finally got to sleep and they eventually got to sleep. I poked my head in in the morning just to make sure everyone was there. They all appeared to be breathing (laughs), so I went downstairs to get some coffee in the breakfast room. Thereās a skylight and Iām noticing as Iām drinking my coffee, the skylight is caked with barf.
(Audience laughs and David starts clapping)
David: There you go. In the 27 years weāve been on the air, nobody has ever discussed skylights caked in barf.
Marg: God, wellā¦
David: Congratulations, Marg.
Marg: Thank you. Thank you. (laughs)
Marg: And I donāt think it was food poisoning.
David: No. Probably not food poisoning.
Marg: So, I wokeā¦well, I let them sleep in until about 12:30. I finally woke them up and I said āHey guys, Iāve got a job for you. All right.ā I brought up all the cleaning supplies, including- I happen to have a box of industrial strength rubber gloves ā that coroners wear when theyāre handling decomposing bodiesā¦
(David laughs)
Marg: And I took the guys out there and they, of course, saw it and were just completely grossed out by it, āEw, dude! Must have been Tylerās friend!ā. And so they all put on these gloves and it was just ridiculous, hilarious how they didnāt want to touch the stuff. Eventually they got it all cleaned up. So anyway, parents, if youāreā¦
David: But pleaded some ignorance, some knowledge, were surprised or not surprised that it was there?
Marg: Umm, all of that. All of that. And uh, but youād think I had asked them to wade through sewage, honestly, the way they were responding to cleaning up the barf.
David: But barf on the skylight, Iām gonnaā¦
Marg: Well, they thought they were getting away with it becauseā¦itās got a railing around this deck and they thought, I guess, that it was just going overā¦
David: Going overā¦into the rosesā¦
(Marg laughs)
David: Oh man. What a way to start your day!
Marg: Exactly.
David: (pretends to be staring up at a skylight) ā That is Chef Boyardee. Itās the canned ravioli.
(Marg laughs)
David: Oh my God.
David: Well, this is a nice thing. 200th episode. Congratulations to you and everybody involved with the program. You can see it tomorrow night at 9:00pm right here on CBS. This is the always lovely Marg Helgenberger, ladies and gentlemen.
Marg: Thank you.