Las Vegas Weekly

February 11, 2010 · 1:56 PM

Jason Alexander as Donny Clay: ‘All I can tell you is nudity will happen’

By Robin Leach

Jason Alexander as motivational speaker Donny Clay.

Photo: Courtesy

Award-winning actor Jason Alexander, widely known as George Costanza in the hit comedy Seinfeld for nine years, knows that he’d never book convention gigs or sell out cabarets with a George Costanza standup routine. He also admits that he can’t do high-flying aerial acrobatics with little people or dance on water cannons a la Cirque du Soleil. But he will encourage nudity!

So faced with a predicament of how to keep busy between TV assignments, Jason out of necessity created The Donny Clay Experience, a hilarious back-handed tribute to the world of motivational speakers. Donny in fact is the world’s fourth-best motivational speaker!

Jason’s show starts tonight in the Peepshow Theater at Planet Hollywood and has an initial one-month run through March 14, although it will be extended if audiences fall in love with the zany character. Just before Jason packed up in Los Angeles for his Las Vegas run, he and I chatted at length. Here is Part 1 of our interview:

Robin Leach: This Donny Clay guy, Jason, is he a friend of yours? Is he an alter ego? Is he somebody you should know? Is he somebody to stay clear of? Who the hell is Donny Clay?

Jason Alexander: Ah, Donny, Donny, Donny. Donny has become a good friend, actually. He grew out of necessity being an interesting mother for creation. I was being asked over and over and over again to perform for corporate entertainments, and I said I don’t have anything. I am not a standup comic. I never did stand up. Yes, I am a singer, but I don’t think the corporate world is going, “Gee, we’d love George Costanza to come here and sing show tunes.” I don’t think that’s something they were clamoring for.

My co-creator on this is a guy named Peter Tildon, who is a morning radio host in L.A. We had done a standup routine on motivational speakers. We loved the turf of those guys’ lives outside their work. What we never really focused on was the work itself and how funny that turf could be. So out of the necessity of going, “Y’know, I don’t want to lose all these opportunities to make a living in the corporate world,” let me see if we can build a character who does that kind of work and show the same kind of fun. We wanted to show the whole notion of someone for the first time who probably doesn’t know how to tie their own shoes telling you how to live your life to the fullest.

Out of that, this whole thing was born, and Donny Clay has taken on a life of its own. He is an easy character for me to step into the shoes of because, again, he has none of the outward appearances of a George Costanza. He does share a great character flaw that George has, and that is someone who has a tremendous sense of self-importance, at the same time knowing that they really have nothing to contribute. No specific talent, but a great deal of authority.

RL: (Laughing) I even know people like that! Sums up most of the big business CEO world.

JA: Doesn’t it? Exactly. Exactly. And we thought that’s just fun. It’s an opportunity to go out on a stage and instead of standup, perform a theater piece. It is a one-man show, but it’s not structured the way a comic would structure a good standup comedy set.

RL: Do you have any flexibility within the script, or do you stick to a set plot?

JA:Oh, absolutely, because so much of the show involves participation with the audience. I get about six people a night up onstage with me to motivate them for various things. Their response varies. The outcome of each individual segment, I’m fully in control, but how we get there can be very much determined by the personality of the audience. It’s totally different every night.

RL: It’s intriguing that you are performing in the Peepshow Theater at Planet Hollywood, where there is partial nudity. And I’ve heard under the covers that Donny Clay apparently uses partial nudity in his motivational speeches.

JA: Yes, you betcha, but I wont be specific about it. It’s me, the girls, the audience, anybody. All I can tell you is nudity will happen. One way or another, there is going to be nakedness on that stage.

RL: Donny is headlined as the world’s fourth-best motivational speaker. Is there any hope that he’d jump up to the level of Tony Robbins?

JA: Well, those are the guys who are in the cross hairs. Actually, what happens at the beginning of any given night, Donny admits to the audience that just before he came out, he was demoted to No. 5. Richard Simmons squeezed him out of the No. 4 spot. The guys who are in Donny’s cross hairs are definitely Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins, and the guy sitting at that No. 1 spot, that baldheaded screwball Dr. Phil. He’s gotta go.

RL: Does Donny have “The Secret”?

JA: He doesn’t have “The Secret,” but what he does have is “The Way.” Donny preaches The Way to find the you inside of you. That’s what you’re not in touch with if you don’t know the you inside of you.

RL: This is hilarious! I mean you’ve obviously heard motivational speakers before, I am sure, and you have seen what they peddle. And you have seen “The Secret” sold by people is the same thing that everybody else is peddling.

JA: Well, there is a secret, absolutely. The amazing thing is, I have talked to people who’ve said, “Are you saying that motivational speakers have no value?” And the answer is absolutely not. I do know that if they can at their best get people to get up and do things that they might otherwise would not have had the confidence or the ability to do, what I am making fun?

This is my favorite analogy: In every diet book, there are about four pages that is actually the diet. If it’s nutritionally sound, it is probably pretty good stuff, but that is four pages. But you can’t put out a four-page diet book, so you have to surround it with 180 pages of crap. You know, my journey, my philosophies, my story, so and so’s story, how we met, what we do, dream the dream, some things bigger, other things smaller, all that crap that has to go around the one little kernel of actual information is the stuff that we are trying to play with.

RL: Did you ever require motivation in your life?

JA: Motivation no, therapy yes. There is a huge difference. I was very lucky because I knew what I wanted to do with my life when I was a young teenager. I was very focused on it. I actually set myself on the path and began to pursue my professional career when I was really very young. So I had a perfect synchronization between passion, ability and opportunity. I never needed that kind of motivation.

RL: Why would you need therapy if you knew what you wanted?

JA: I would probably be one of those people who would tell you that everyone could benefit from a little bit of introspection. Especially me. I began my involvement with traditional therapy when I was about 37. I do everything a little early, and I was having a premature midlife crisis. I was in a place where I was re-evaluating every choice I had made in my life and asking who was I? Was I doing everything I wanted to be doing? You can really mess your life up terribly at that point. A lot of guys get divorced or make terrible mistakes.

I went into therapy at that point and stayed for 10 years, primarily because I was fascinated by what I was learning. It transitioned me into this really fortuitous thing because I began about three years before Seinfeld ended, and had I not been doing this kind of work before Seinfeld ended -- the life is up in the spotlight and then the spotlight goes off. That can screw you up. The fact that I was already doing the kind of internal work and kind of becoming a little more enriched human being, it made my life outside the spotlight as fascinating and challenging to me as it had been inside the spotlight. And so I didn’t freak out.

RL: That’s good to hear. Are you still in therapy?

JA : I’m not. I went pretty regularly for 10 years. I got an awful lot out of it. I know if something came up and I needed that person to talk to again, all I’d have to do is say, “Hey Nance, I am coming in,” and she’d be ready, willing and waiting. I don’t think it’s a forever thing. I think people use it when they have questions they need answered or problems to work through, and it takes as long as it takes and then you move on.

Check back tomorrow here at Vegas DeLuxe for Part 2 of my interview with Jason, whose run as Donny Clay begins tonight at Planet Hollywood.

Robin Leach has been a journalist for more than 50 years and has spent the past decade giving readers the inside scoop on Las Vegas, the world’s premier platinum playground.

Follow Robin Leach on Twitter at Twitter.com/Robin_Leach.

Follow Vegas DeLuxe on Twitter at Twitter.com/vegasdeluxe.

Follow VDLX Editor Don Chareunsy on Twitter at Twitter.com/VDLXEditorDon.

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