Host Marc Summers on Double Dare
When I first reached out to Marc Summers about coming on the Yap Tapes, he told me he didn’t really think he had any stories to tell. And I said “bullshit, you’re Marc fuckin’ Summers, let me find the stories.” When the day rolled around he spent an hour and 19 minutes telling me about babysitting Pauly Shore, sneaking into a private bar with Mel Brooks and Nathan Lane, changing his name because of a serial killer, and the day a producer told him to get slimed or give up the job he’d waited his entire life for. He had epic stories to share and I could’ve spent hours yapping with him. He was also incredibly genuine and so damn funny.
I’m a millennial, which puts me squarely in the generation that grew up on “Double Dare” reruns and “What Would You Do?” and believed, with my whole chest, that getting a bucket of green goo dumped on your head was a legitimate career path and the answer to my prayers. I’m still pretty sure that if I could get slimed with Marc today, I’d be healed from all of my troubles. Marc is the reason for that. He’s also kinda the reason I painted my office orange, which I didn’t fully connect until he asked about my walls and I heard myself say the Nickelodeon color palette did something to my brain at a very young age. It’s comforting for me and that’s exactly what his interview felt like. Walking back in time and feeling comfort and nostalgia.
How Marc Summers Got Into TV By Lying About His Resume
Before the goggles and the slime, Marc was a kid from Indianapolis who wanted one thing: to host a game show. He never wanted to host a kids’ game show though. He was a magician, a DJ, a stand-up and a studio page at CBS, where he made sure every producer in the building knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. His big break came on “The Joker’s Wild,” when the announcer couldn’t make it and Marc filled in. He wasn’t announcing though, he was doing the audience warm-up, the job nobody sees that keeps a studio audience awake and laughing from 7:15 p.m. until sometimes 2 a.m.
I’ve been to several shows before and I can tell you, the reason the audiences do so good on tv is 100% due to the person doing the crowd work. One of the best audience warm-ups I had the pleasure of seeing was Brody Stevens, 818 til’ I die. RIP Brody. They are the heart and soul of television with live audiences. A person you often never even knew existed if you’re watching from the comfort of your own home.
Marc learned the craft by watching the best, including Lorenzo Music, the voice of Carlton the Doorman on “Rhoda.” Then he walked into Music’s office and told him he did warm-ups. He had never done one in his life. He rattled off a list of shows he’d supposedly worked, gave his number and figured that was the end of it. Three weeks later, Music called and asked him to fill in on a pilot. Marc said yes, then, in his words, pooped his pants, because now he actually had to do it. Thankfully this was long before anyone could Google a resume and find out you were faking it.
He brought magic tricks. He did cut-and-restored ropes. He did anything he could think of for hours. At 11 p.m., Grant Tinker, president of MTM Productions and married to Mary Tyler Moore at the time, came down through the audience, told him it might be the best warm-up he’d ever seen. Marc couldn’t tell you one thing he did that night. He was too scared. That reference opened every door after it, and within a few years he was working six days a week on “Alice,” “Star Search,” “Soap,” “Webster” and weekend game shows, making six figures before most of his friends could cover rent.
The Comedy Store Years and Getting Fired by Mitzi Shore
While the warm-up work was paying the bills, Marc was also doing stand-up at The Comedy Store, back when 40 or 50 people showed up on a Monday hoping for a spot instead of 4,000. Out front, Jay Leno and David Letterman would be talking material, oh to be a fly on the wall there. Robin Williams was about to arrive and man I can only imagine what it was like getting to watch him in his prime, how lucky everyone was. Marc had 12 solid, squeaky-clean minutes and a corduroy suit, which earned him the nickname “the accountant comedian.” He was also the only married guy in the room, so while everyone else was going out after and picking up women, he went home to his wife.
He also worked The Magic Castle, four shows a night, seven days a week, for $145. And yes, he even once babysat Pauly Shore. Marc walked in to The Comedy Store one day and Mitzi asked him to keep an eye on Pauly while she ran errands. Pauly was probably a very young toddler so Marc said it’s highly likely he doesn’t remember him but he enjoyed seeing Pauly grow and have a successful career of his own.
Then one Monday, Mitzi got on the phone and told Marc there was nothing else she could do for him and she wasn’t booking him anymore. His first reaction was exactly what yours would be. His second reaction is why, he’s Marc Summers. He calls it the best thing that ever happened to him, because too many people relied on Mitzi and the Store to carry them to the next level, and nobody wakes up in the morning planning to advance your career for you. Getting fired, he says, is the best motivation there is.
Marc Summers Wasn’t Born Marc Summers
Prepare to have your flabbers gasted because Summers was actually born Marc Berkowitz, shocking I know.. The name change is one of those stories that sounds made up. In 1977, his agent called him at 7:15 in the morning and told him to change it, because police had just arrested the Son of Sam, and his name was David Berkowitz. Marc wouldn’t be able get an audition with that last name and likely could’ve been a career ender at the time.
He borrowed the surname from Dick Summer, a DJ he’d loved growing up in Indianapolis, added an S and became Marc Summers, and the rest was history. He says the work started coming almost immediately, and that he actually liked it. Becoming a new person on paper gave him a little more freedom to figure out who that person was. Marc Summers just sounds so damn good too.
Treating Kids Like People on Double Dare
I remember watching Double Dare as a kid and absolutely loved it for so many reasons but one of the main reasons was because it was the first time I saw an adult treating kids like we really mattered. He was never condescending or talking down to us like we were just loud little idiots who had been given too much sugar. He talked to kids like they were actual people.
It took Marc 13 years from landing in Los Angeles to landing “Double Dare.” He said he didn’t want to host a kids’ show, so he never hosted it like one. He called the boys “sir” and the girls “ma’am,” the same way he would have on “Jeopardy!” or “Wheel of Fortune.” He never asked a 10-year-old if he had a girlfriend, which by the way is a super freaking weird thing to ask kids. Marc was a safe space. He did Ethel Merman impressions at children who had no idea who Ethel Merman was, and once brought a kid up from the audience to duet “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with him on air. Nickelodeon got nervous about the jokes, but the kids got them immediately. I remember loving this show so much because of that reason. I felt like an adult when I was watching the show, it felt like kids were really being seen.
He also cheated for the contestants. Marc admits he’d push kids up the Sundae Slide when their feet got stuck in the whipped cream, because he always wanted them to win, who didn’t? Some viewers wrote in to complain it wasn’t fair. He didn’t care. Bob Barker taught him that the contestants are the stars and the host is just the conduit from point A to point B, and that philosophy is the entire reason a generation of us felt seen by a man in a blazer standing next to a giant nose.
When “Family Double Dare” came along, the parents took it way too seriously and the kids still just wanted to get messy. There were of course a few times when the parents got really mad at the kids for not winning, how rude, but that didn’t stop Marc from cheering the kids on. Marc says the focus groups back then were consistent: kids didn’t care about space camp or computers or trips to Europe. They wanted whipped cream, they wanted messy and they wanted fun. And the show rewarded them for the exact behavior they’d get grounded for at home. That, he thinks, was the magic.
Living With OCD While Hosting the Messiest Show on Television
Marc didn’t know about the obstacle course when he took the job. He walked into the Philadelphia studio, saw a crew pouring chocolate syrup and green slime down a slide, and asked what it was for. And when the focus groups came back after the first 65 episodes asking why the host never got messy, Nickelodeon gave him a choice: get slimed or give up the show he’d waited his whole life for. So Marc chose to get slimed, he wants to be very clear that he loved every minute of it, no matter what people assume.
But what no one knew at the time is that Marc was living with obsessive compulsive disorder.
He wasn’t diagnosed with the OCD disorder until years later, while hosting “Biggers and Summers” on Lifetime. Reading prep notes on a guest, Dr. Eric Hollander, the night before, he kept thinking, “I do that.” The next day he had to decide whether to pretend on air or tell the truth. He told the truth, on camera, and Hollander became his doctor. Dateline followed his treatment for a year, and his graduation involved NBC turning his living room into a TV studio while he was out of the house. His knees buckled when he walked in, he did the interview anyway.
Marc turns 75 in November, shocking I know, and says he’s about 82 percent cured. His advice to anyone struggling with OCD is blunt, because he’s walked the line, he’s seen others struggle with it. Until you’re ready to get better, you won’t. When you are, the help is there, but you have to be the one who is ready.
From a Broadway Bar to an Off-Broadway Run
Marc has been chasing theater since a confirmation-class trip to see “Fiddler on the Roof” at age 13. He kept choosing TV because it was easier, but the itch never left. After a cancer diagnosis and a car accident that broke every bone in his face, Bruce Vilanch told him to stop talking about it and do it already. So Marc saw “The Producers” 24 times, spent months trying to get into the private third-floor bar Mel Brooks and Nathan Lane frequented next to the theater, and finally ran past the bouncer during an argument.
So he’s sitting at the bar and a guy taps him on the shoulder and tells him he was almost Marc. Marc was confused by the statement and the guy explains he lost the role for the host of Double Dare because he too had auditioned. He now produced Broadway shows and four weeks later, Marc was playing Vince Fontaine in “Grease” at a summer stock theater in New Jersey. There he met Drew Gasparini, who introduced him to Alex Brightman, who eventually wrote Marc’s one-man show, “The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers.” They toured it for a decade before a director from “Mrs. Doubtfire” wandered in on an off night in Buffalo and made one phone call. Ninety days later, at 72, Marc was starring in his own off-Broadway show.
He’d skipped two auditions before that, “Big” and Leo Bloom in “The Producers,” because he was too scared to walk in the room, Matthew Broderick ended up playing the role of Leo Bloom. Marc’s up for a Broadway show now that opens in fall 2027. He just shot a Hulu pilot in Vancouver a few weeks ago but mum’s the word right now on the project. The phone is still ringing of course, because he’s a damn legend.
The Influencer Hot Take
I asked Marc for his most indefensible opinion and his words, it’s influencers. He doesn’t understand how someone with no culinary background gets paid to tell him where to eat. He thinks you can’t decide to become an influencer; it just happens, which used to be true. But today we all have access to social media and the internet, it’s different. He spent decades learning a craft, rehearsing it and hoping the right people saw it, and he doesn’t quite know what the new kids are getting paid for, which is fair. The digital era is still so new, even for the younger crowds.
I’ve spent a decade in marketing and have worked for celebrity influencers, so I gave him the real answer, you’d be surprised to hear they’re pulling in 8-figure paydays and turning down tv shows because they make more on social media. The professionals aren’t just people in Hollywood anymore. They’re everyday people. building independent media companies, with websites generating ad revenue, sponsorship rates tied to real audiences, affiliate programs and digital products. What brands are actually paying for is access to a community. And Marc has one of the biggest, most loyal communities I’ve ever seen.
How to Support Marc Summers Right Now
The 40th anniversary of “Double Dare” happens Oct. 4 at City Winery in Philadelphia. It sold out fast, so it’s now a pay-per-view event through marcsummerslive.com, launching Halloween night. He still talks to everyone from the original cast, Harvey, Robin, the writers, the directors, and they’ll all be in the same room again, they really were good people. Find him at @realmarcsummers on social. And if you want to put money somewhere that matters to him, Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation funds childhood cancer research, and as a cancer survivor himself, it’s been his charity for 15 years.
He still has the original Man in the Boat from the obstacle course, by the way. Google “Marc Summers Man in the Boat” and watch him lose it for a full minute on national television. Then tell me again he doesn’t have any stories.
It was such a pleasure yapping with Marc, and I hope we get a memoir or two because I truly believe we barely cracked the surface of the stories Marc has. There are decades of television, celebrities, behind-the-scenes chaos, friendships, near disasters, ridiculous moments and probably enough Nickelodeon lore to fill several books. I could have kept talking to him for another three hours and still walked away thinking, “Okay, but what happened next?”
Some people become part of your childhood because they were on your television. Others become part of it because of the way they made you feel while they were there. Marc Summers is both. Getting the chance to sit down with the guy who made me feel like kids actually mattered was pretty damn special.
About the Author
