A Brief History of Barbra Streisand’s Talk Show Seating Arrangements Due to Her Extreme Vanity
Barbra Streisand insists on having the left side of her face filmed. For years, talk show hosts have been making excuses as they cave to her demands.
Barbra Streisand’s recent comments showing sympathy for Michael Jackson seem to have revealed a bad side of her. But Streisand has always had a bad side. Specifically, her right side.
Streisand rarely does interviews and talk show appearances, but it has become well known over the years that when she does, she insists on the camera shooting her from her left side. Apparently, that’s her good side and/or she refuses to reveal to the world that she her face also has a right side.
This is problematic because most talk shows have the host seated on the right side of the frame and the guest on the left, which leaves the guest angling the right side of their body toward the camera as they face the host.
One such show with this setup is Jimmy Kimmel Live. Earlier this year, Kimmel revealed to Andy Cohen on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live that Streisand cancelled an appearance on his show because he refused to honor her request to sit on his right without making any mention of the reverse set arrangement during the show.
Unlike Kimmel, other talk shows have agreed to accommodate Streisand’s seating demands over the years, masking the change-up in some pretty creative ways — some subtle, others not so much. Let’s took a look, shall we?
1997: Rosie O’Donnell Reverses Her Set
Barbra Streisand meant a lot to Rosie O’Donnell, who grew up viewing Streisand’s work as a connection to her late mother — so when Streisand appeared on The Rosie O’Donnell Show in November 1997, O’Donnell was more than willing to accommodate Streisand, reversing the layout of her desk and chairs.
Given the backwards direction, Streisand entered through the same curtain that Rosie enters at the start of her show at camera right, rather than the separate entrance guests traditionally used at camera left.
In an effort to not make the real reason behind this reversal obvious, the change was made a few weeks prior to Streisand’s appearance. Both Streisand and O’Donnell confirmed the reasoning behind the backwards set to BuzzFeed News:
Streisand admitted it years later: “She changed the chair to give me my good side.”
“Listen to me,” O’Donnell said, laughing. “I would do anything for her. She wanted it, and she wanted it covered up so you didn’t know she was vain. I was like, ‘Done and done.’ What else?”
— Ramin Setoodeh, BuzzFeed News, 3/14/19
2014: Jimmy Fallon Gives Barbra His Desk
In September 2014, Jimmy Fallon welcomed Streisand onto The Tonight Show, explaining that in honor of her first appearance on Tonight in over 50 years, she should sit behind the desk. Streisand, of course, feigned surprise.
This accommodation was a true 180˚ turn in The Tonight Show’s treatment of Streisand. She had last appeared as a guest during Carson’s tenure as host in March 1963, and after cancelling a July 1975 appearance on the show last minute, Carson went on air and told his audience the following:
“I was informed prior to going on the air that we’ll have a cancellation tomorrow night. Barbra Streisand will not be with us. We don’t know why. Nobody has been able to reach her. Although she doesn’t owe the show anything in particular, we thought it only fair to tell you, so when you tune in, you don’t get mad at us. I would rather you get mad at her. Streisand will not be here Wednesday night, nor will she be here in the future.”
Ironically enough, Fallon would also make a point during this interview to assure everyone that Barbra Streisand is allegedly, to his surprise, not a diva. To see that, you can check out this clip, aptly titled “Barbra Streisand Is Not a Diva.” Whatever you say, Jimmy.
2016: The Alec Baldwin Misdirect (a.k.a. the Fallon/Baldwin Sandwich)
Two years later, Streisand would return to The Tonight Show to promote her duets album Encore with an interview from the usual guest seat, to the left of the desk — but she appeared with album collaborator Alec Baldwin, which gave her an excuse to spend most of the interview angling her body toward him to include him in the conversation, allowing her to still show off more of her left side than her right.
2018: James Corden Lets Barbra Drive in a “Carpool Karaoke”
In November 2018, The Late Late Show with James Corden locked in a Streisand appearance for one of its popular “Carpool Karaoke” segments, in which Corden typically chauffeurs musicians around while singing along to their songs on the radio.
In a first for the series, Streisand’s Carpool Karaoke appearance saw Corden being the passenger rather than the driver, which again allowed Streisand to cheat the angle of her face slightly more toward the right than it would have been had she not been in the driver’s seat. The move was contextualized at the start of the clip, with Corden finding out his own car has been booted, forcing him to call Streisand for a ride to work in her own vehicle.
Various Years: Pretending Nothing Is Different
Despite all the ways these shows have indirectly explained Streisand’s unusual seating arrangement to viewers, other shows on which she has guested simply didn’t address the issue at all. Shows like The Meredith Vieira Show have featured sets in which the host’s chair is identical to the guest’s, so even though the hosts typically sit on the viewers’ right, their switches to the left side for Streisand have been insignificant enough to pass off without any explanation.
2017: Directly Addressing It
While Ellen is another talk show where the guest and host chairs are indistinguishable, Ellen DeGeneres decided to address the setup head-on in a friendly chat with Streisand during her appearance in November 2017.
After DeGeneres jokes about how she too prefers the right side of her face and suggests they both do the interview with their left sides to camera, Streisand explains, “I have two different sides to my face… to me,” before explaining that filming for her Netflix special caught her almost entirely on her wrong side.
While DeGeneres’ honest approach should be respected here, she earns zero creativity points for any set-direction slight of hand, which has arguably become a pastime of Streisand television appearances by this point, don’t you think?
