Johnny Carson kept a secret list of ‘forbidden guests’

“Sometimes, if the trouble was caused by a guest, the offending party was banned,” Malkoff writes in his new book. ‘Despite persistent rumours Tonight Toon insiders long claimed that the show never had a list of guests who weren’t allowed to appear with Carson.

Malkoff explains, “But the ban list was real. My sources for this are the This evening staff and crew, NBC employees and even the guests themselves. This includes Peter Lassally, Carson’s producer of twenty-two years.

However, according to Malkoff, “the list was not kept physically, on paper. Burt Reynolds and Rich Little both claimed to have seen a hard copy – there were over thirty big name guests that Carson ignored at one point, although sometimes a banned guest could still appear when a guest host was on duty.

One of the guests who was ultimately said to be “banned” was mentalist Uri Geller, who, according to Malkoff, “despised” the late-night icon. Geller appeared on the show in August 1973.