Bob Newhart Calls on Seth Meyers to Address Sexual Harassment at the Golden Globes

Bob Newhart is confident that Seth Meyers will address the wave of sexual harassment revelations in Hollywood tonight as he hosts the Golden Globe Awards.

Newhart told reporters from Page Six that he thinks Meyers will say some controversial things on stage, but there’s no way around it.

“He has to deal with the sexual-harassment issue,” Newhart said. “It’s the 200-pound gorilla in the room.”

The reporter joking asked if he meant Harvey Weinstein, to which Newhart replied laughing, “Well, the resemblance is amazing.”

Meyers himself seemed to indicate that the show would be topical. In the ad for the awards show he looks at the camera and says, pointedly: “We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Newhart won a Golden Globe himself back in 1962, though he said since then “they’ve gotten more legitimate.” He recalled how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association once influenced the winners and nominees unfairly.

“I get the feeling the studios went to them and said, ‘You’ve got to clean up your act,’” he said.

When asked if his friend Don Rickles had ever won a Golden Globe, Newhart said he was sure he hadn’t. “I’d have heard about it, a lot,” he said.

The 88-year-old comedian memorialized Rickles last month during ABC’s 20/20 special, The Year In Memorium.

“‘Keep my name alive,’ that was one of his phrases,” Newhart recalled of his friend. “If someone had a gun to my forehead, I could never say to a guy in the audience ‘is that your wife sir? Jesus…’ That’s just the way he was!”