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Tricky Dick In His Own Words: Harry Shearer On ‘Nixon’s The One’

By David Fricke
October 10, 2014
Rolling Stone

Harry Shearer plays the disgraced president with almost disturbing accuracy in new Web series

It may be his greatest comeback. Forty years after he resigned from the presidency in disgrace, Richard Nixon, who died in 1994, is about to be a viral sensation. In Nixon’s the One, a six-part series debuting on YouTube on October 21st, Harry Shearer – actor-satirist and the voice of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons – portrays Nixon in his Watergate tailspin with hysterical accuracy (hound-dog nose, an almost musical snarl) and chilling historical precision. The dialogue – a foul-mouthed cocktail of loopy arrogance and ranting against hippies, Commies and the liberal elite – comes directly from tapes Nixon secretly recorded in the Oval Office, while the action is shot as if by hidden cameras, reinforcing the image of a tyrant under siege…

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Merry Christmas In August: Harry Shearer Shares Nixon’s Weirdness

The Simpsons’ Mr. Burns is behind a six-part YouTube series focusing on the former president.

By Nikki Schwab
October 07, 2014
U.S. News & World Report

“It had always fascinated me because Nixon is this guy who goes into this profession that requires the greatest talent for small talk with strangers, a talent that he had zero of,” Shearer says. “And he gets to the top, has to quit and what does he do in those last eight minutes in the Oval Office? He starts making jokes with the crew.”

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Photo: Justin Downing

Harry Shearer Voices Frustration in ‘Nixon’s The One’ Clip (Video Premiere)

By Eric R. Danton
September 26, 2014
The Wall Street Journal

Richard Nixon has long fascinated actor and comic Harry Shearer, who portrays the 37th president in the web series “Nixon’s The One,” based on the secret recordings Nixon made in the Oval Office. Speakeasy today premieres a clip that shows Shearer’s verbatim re-creation of Nixon talking about the ways in which he feels that John F. Kennedy slighted him. The premiere comes on the anniversary of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate during the 1960 presidential election. The scene is based on a recording made more than seven years after Kennedy was assassinated…

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Photos: Hat Trick Productions

Witness ‘Simpsons’ Actor Harry Shearer’s Total Transformation Into Richard Nixon

By Ron Kretsch
September 18, 2014
Dangerous Minds

Between playing bassist Derek Smalls in the immortal metal spoof This is Spinal Tap and voicing dozens of characters on The Simpsons, Harry Shearer has been a key performer in two of the most oft-quoted entertainment franchises in living memory. For his latest project, however, Shearer’s the one doing the quoting. He’s re-enacting, verbatim, moments out of the presidency of the disgraced Richard M. Nixon, recasting the tragic president as a comic figure…

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The Weird Minutes Before Nixon’s Resignation

By Andrea DenHoed
August 08, 2014
The New Yorker

Many Americans remember the telecast during which Richard Nixon announced his resignation from the Presidency, forty years ago today, as a dark moment in the nation’s history. Watching the Leader of the Free World crumble in disgrace induced a mordant glee in certain quarters, but it was still a grim spectacle. The comedian Harry Shearer has another word for the events of that night: “goofy.”

Harry Shearer as Richard Nixon sitting at desk in the oval office

Photo: Ollie Upton

Legendary Comic Harry Shearer: Nixon Was The Last Great Tragicomic Character Of Our Time

The “SNL” alumn and “Simpsons” actor talks to Salon about his Nixon satire and how he wants to revolutionize comedy

By Prachi Gupta
August 08, 2014
Salon

“I thought — and I think, correctly, that it was going to be easier to get this show made here than in the United States, and that turned out to be true. I can’t totally explain why. All I can do is quote — and I’m not going to reveal any names — but one of the major channels in the United States, what they said when they were offered to premiere this series, and they said, “This is just too different from our normal fare.” I suspected that if I did this show in England, I’d have fewer dumb meetings and fewer people saying, very seriously, “Look, we know [Nixon] didn’t like black people but does he have to hate Jews, too?” Just fewer of those conversations. I knew that I wouldn’t have those anymore.”

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Harry Shearer as Richard Nixon, with Henry Goodman as Henry Kissinger

Photo: Sky

Nixon’s The One!, Sky Arts 1, Review

By Charlotte Runcie
January 30, 2014
The Telegraph

Harry Shearer was excellent as the former American president in Nixon’s the One! says Charlotte Runcie.

Harry Shearer is one of entertainment’s great chameleons. Famous for being the voice behind comedy cartoon characters (The Simpsons’s Mr Burns and Ned Flanders among them) and the co-creator and star (as Derek Smalls) of This is Spinal Tap, he has immersed himself in a variety of roles across his career. And in Nixon’s the One! (Sky Arts 1), Shearer played the disgraced US president with such perfectly matched tone and intonation (and such astonishing prosthetic jowls) that you really could have been watching Nixon himself…

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Simpsons Star Shearer Portrays Nixon Behind Closed Doors’

By Genevieve Hassan
January 30, 2014
BBC News

“He’s full of hatreds – if you listen to him he doesn’t like black people, he doesn’t like Mexicans, he doesn’t like Jews, he doesn’t like homosexuals – I don’t think he liked people basically. Which is an odd thing to say about somebody who goes into politics – normally they love being surrounded – it’s part of the series of ironies and oddities about his personality.”

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Harry Shearer: What Mr Burns Has In Common With Richard Nixon

The actor best known for his array of voices in The Simpsons is re-enacting the tapes released after Watergate

By Andrew Billen
January 27, 2014
The Times

According to Harry Shearer, we Brits got it wrong about Richard Nixon. America’s disgraced 37th President was never known as Tricky Dicky in the States. “It was Tricky Dick, not Tricky Dicky,” says Shearer…

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Harry Shearer as Richard Nixon - photo by Justin Downing

Photo: Justin Downing

Harry Shearer: ‘Richard Nixon Wanted My Ass In Vietnam’

By Andrew Collins
January 29, 2014
The Guardian

If the US president had had his way, the actor, best known for Spinal Tap and The Simpsons, might have had a much shorter, more brutal life. But why has he now decided to play him in TV series Nixon’s the One?…

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Harry Shearer at President Nixon's 100th Birthday Gala - photo by Kris Connor

Photo: Kris Connor/Getty Images

Harry Shearer On Bringing Out Richard Nixon’s Feminine Side

The Simpsons star explains what it takes to bring America’s most reviled president back to sympathetic life

Stephen Robinson
January 18, 2014
The Spectator

“Nixon was always an expositor of the manly virtues, of ‘strength and resolve,’ yet his physical gestures have a lot of daintiness to them… When he tries to go macho, it’s always about ten yards short of the goal line.”

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Harry Shearer’s ‘Le Show’ Reaches 30th Birthday

By Dave Walker
December 04, 2013
The Times-Picayune

“It wasn’t called ‘Le Show’ when it started,” Shearer said. “I think I had the nerve to call it ‘The Hour of Power’ as a satirical swipe at the Rev. Robert Schuller, who protested almost immediately. Then I changed it to ‘Voice of America’ because I figured that wasn’t being used domestically.

“It started out as a place for me to do satirical comedy every week, to be with an audience and to have a place to write and create without having to do standup and entertain drunks for a living. Presumably, at the time of day the show goes out, most people are still sober. I can’t speak for here.”

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