The table wasn’t on the Fox lot. It was in a private house, the home of Michael Jackson’s manager, and the cast of “The Simpsons” had been called there for the first read-through of an episode titled “Stark Raving Dad.” Their guest star was due any minute.
Dan Castellaneta has been the voice of Homer Simpson since the show began. On July 20, 2010, he sat down in North Hollywood for a long interview with the Television Academy Foundation, and at one point the conversation turned to the Michael Jackson episode. “Michael Jackson was a fan of the show and wanted to do it,” Castellaneta said.
The episode opened the show’s third season on Fox on September 19, 1991. In it, Homer ends up sharing a room with a big, gentle man who is convinced he’s Michael Jackson, and Michael played the part. Before any of that could be recorded, though, everybody had to sit around one table and read the script out loud.
“What’s funny was, he was actually at his manager’s house, was the first table read,” Castellaneta said. A table read is the first time a cast goes through a script together, and there’s usually some chatting before it starts. People say hello and find their seats. For most guest stars that’s the easy part. Michael had made a plan to skip it.
“They told me later that Michael Jackson had timed it so that he could sit down at the table and read,” Castellaneta said, “because he didn’t want to sit and talk with other people, he’s that shy.”
So one of the most famous people on earth, a guest in his own manager’s house, had worked out his entrance to the minute. He’d walk in, take his seat and go straight to page one, and nobody would have to make small talk with him. He sat down right on time, and that’s where the plan stopped working.
Dan Castellaneta tells the table read story to the Television Academy Foundation
This is the Television Academy Foundation’s own upload from that 2010 interview. Castellaneta gets to the table read at about 1:35 and finishes the story at about 3:12.
“So he sat down at the specific time and I wasn’t there,” Castellaneta said.
The empty chair was Homer’s.
Castellaneta had been across town. “I thought I had more time and I was in Hollywood sitting with a friend,” he said, passing the minutes until he needed to leave. He had the time wrong. “It turned out I was a half hour late,” he said.
That left Michael, who had planned his arrival so he wouldn’t have to chat, sitting at a table full of people with nobody saying a word. Castellaneta only heard about it afterwards.
“They said there’s a whole half hour nobody said anything, it was like really quiet and everybody was mad at me,” he said.
He didn’t know any of that when he came through the door, so he opened with a joke. “I said I’m sorry I’m late, it’s a good thing I just decided to show up early,” he said. He doesn’t mention in the clip whether anybody at the table found it funny.
Other accounts of how the episode was made tell it the same way. The read-through was at the home of Michael’s manager, Sandy Gallin, and the man who plays Homer was 30 minutes late.
The half hour of silence didn’t put Michael off. When it was time to record, he turned up and worked alongside the regular cast. “He came in in the studio and recorded with us,” Castellaneta said.