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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: January 17, 1999
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Inside the Actors Studio, “Sean Penn” (season 5, episode 7).
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Bradley Cooper’s appearance on the Inside the Actors Studio episode honoring Sean Penn is one of those stranger-than-fiction things that sound too bizarre to have actually happened. Like one of the coincidences that Ricky Jay narrates about at the beginning of Magnolia.
But it’s true! In January of 1999 — more than two years before getting his big break on Alias and a year still removed from Wet Hot American Summer — Bradley Cooper, armed with the most late-’90s haircut you ever did see, was in the audience for the Inside the Actors Studio episode celebrating the career of Sean Penn. And after James Lipton was done lasciviously poring over every significant role of Penn’s career, but before asking Penn the Proust questionnaire, Penn took questions from the audience. And who was there to ask one but Bradley Cooper’s Hollywood-ready mug. The fact that the question was about Hurlyburly, of all forgettable Sean Penn movies (but perfectly attuned to acting-school-dudes like Cooper) was merely the cherry on top.
What truly makes this a Magnolia-worthy coincidence, of course, is that Louis CK, years later, went on a podcast and joked about Inside the Actors Studio and how none of the prospective actors asking these questions would ever have gone on to actual careers. He even uses Sean Penn as an example!
The string of perfect coincidences — up to and including that American Hustle scene that the YouTuber included at the end — is a great Hollywood tale all of its own.
