Craig Ferguson thought he'd be fired for refusing to mock Britney Spears after she shaved her head

Los Angeles Times

The former Late Late Show host hasn't reacted to going viral this week over his February 2007 monologue in which he refused to skewer Spears after she shaved her head. His monologue went viral following the The New York Times Presents' Framing Britney Spears' documentary showing the media's mistreatment of her. The documentary showed late-night hosts like Jay Leno and David Letterman making jokes at her expense. But it didn't show Ferguson's monologue, which he has previously described as his "Jerry Maguire moment." Ferguson spoke about the monologue in a December 2019 interview with the Los Angeles Times, which described it as one of "our 100 favorite pop culture moments of the millennium (so far)." "I happened to be away doing stand-up that weekend, and I started seeing news reports about what was happening to Britney Spears. And I remember feeling kind of shocked at the kind of glee that seemed to accompany them," said Ferguson. "I don’t know Ms. Spears and I’m not a doctor, but to all outward appearances it was some kind of psychotic episode. It didn’t look like she was having a good time at all. Now the atmosphere is very different; I don’t think that’s how it would be covered. But it was covered like that then. When I got to work Monday, the writers were all very happy because they assumed it was a 'Dick Cheney shooting his lawyer in the face' sort of event. A lawyer gets shot, nobody dies, Dick Cheney’s absolved — that’s a mine of comedy! That’s great! But I didn’t feel that way about the Britney Spears thing. Philip McGrade and I wrote that monologue. Philip’s an old friend from Scotland; he’s known me for a long time and was one of the first hires I made on the show. Most of it really, I just kind of said, but we (assembled) the bullet points I wanted to make sure I got across. But really, I thought at the time that I was giving my resignation monologue. I thought, 'They’re going to fire me for this.' And actually the opposite happened, and everyone seemed to be very happy about it. I never heard anything negative from anybody at the network or (production company) Worldwide Pants. But I was convinced at the time that I was getting into trouble."