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Intimate Encounter with Josh Duhamel and other cast members and writers on NBC'S Las Vegas.

Paley Center for Media 'Lovin' Las Vegas Nov 07

special thanks to wireImage and I'm not obsessed for great photos.

Josh Duhamel, star of the highly successful NBC show Las Vegas, and summer blockbuster hit Transformers, led a panel at the Paley Center for Media located in Beverly Hills California, Monday night Nov 5^th.

 My son and I were lucky enough to win tickets to be there and even got to sit on the second row, first row saved for the actors, so it was as close as you got!

 Included on the panel were Josh Duhamel (Danny McCoy) James Lesure (Mike Cannon) Molly Sims (Delinda Deline) Camille Guaty (Piper) and also the creator Gary Scott Thompson and 2 head writers Kim Newton and Matt Pyken.

The evening started with an episode being introduced by the shows creator Gary Scott Thompson, he told us it was a 2 parter originally to be episode 3 but the network loved it so much they pushed it back to be shown during sweeps so the writers had to rewrite other episodes in between to make them make sense.

The episode starts out with an outrageous dream being had by Danny McCoy(Josh Duhamel) and ends with all of us in the room holding our breath to see what happens in the second part.

Sam Rubin is introduced as the nights moderator and he calls out the cast and writers.

Throughout the night we are privy to James Leasure's sense of humor, he laughed at everything and just seemed like a very genuine, fun person. It was great to see how the three seasoned actors mingled and got along with Camille Guaty being the new one on the show, they all seem to love their job, the writer’s love writing for them. Camille’s character Piper is named after Kim Newton’s dog.  Kim is also the writer who wrote the infamous scene of Laura Flynn Boyle’s character blowing off the roof to her death.

Josh Duhamel was up against “Grey’s Anatomy star McSteamy” and got the part for two reasons, first he came in ready to do the hardest secene in the pilot, where he and Delinda are in bed together and get caught by her father Ed (James Caan) and second because the show’s creator’s wife loved Josh’s roll as Leo on All my Children, as did many of the audience, many wolf whistles and cheers whenever Leo was brought up.

All of the actors and writers loved James “Jimmy” Caan and miss him on set.  They said they always knew if they did a good job according to Jimmy by whenever they were exiting a scene he would smile and nod his head, but if they needed to work on something he would say pssst and wriggle his finger at them and tell them to come here for a minute.

James Lesure said he took the part mostly because Nikki Cox was a part of the cast, he also said one time they were actually filming in Las Vegas( most filming is done in California on 3 sound stages, huge set with a working casino, coffe bar and restaurant) and James is out front filming a scene where he is getting cars for the Montecito guests and a super drunk guys comes up and tips him and wants a car right now, James tries to explain the situation but the man proceeds to get in one of the prop cars and then gets very angry when the “non working” car won’t move.

Another incident is brought up by Gary Thompson about how Molly Sims had mostly done modeling before her part on Las Vegas and there was a time when he was trying to tell her how to do a specific scene and she would keep stopping him and make a circle around her face and say “Money” and then do the scene wrong 8 times finally the ninth time she took his advice and did he scene right, the rest of the evening the other panel members would periodically circle their faces and say “money” just to be funny.

When asked is Josh Duhamel leaving Las Vegas he replied that he would stay with the show as long as it was around.

They had many instances where they had to do many many takes because of uncontrollable laughter, Camille Guaty was so bad one time she had to turn her laughter into racking sobs to cover it up for a “sad” scene. Molly Sims had to do almost 100 takes for just one scene because of the giggles.

They all seemed like a great big family, they all adore Tom Selleck, it was a hard time getting him there Matt Pyken tells us, but they are all glad he is, no one can fill James Caan’s shoes but Tom brings his own type of magic to the show.

Matt Pyken also let slip that there was a big secret coming up and hinted it had to do with Camille and James’s Characters, (Piper and Mike) dating in a future episode.  Also they would probably bring back James Caan and Nikki Cox as guest spots in the future.

Gary Scott Thompson seemed pleased with his baby, it is being shown in 70 countries now, it is the only NBC show that was brought out in 2002 that is still on the air.  Many casino’s call and thank Gary and say they always watch the show to see what new schemes people are coming up with to rob them.

It was a very entertaining panel, which wrapped up with Josh asking everyone in the audience who else had to go pee.  I grabbed the first photo with the sexy Josh Duhamel as he was heading out to the bathroom and then were lucky enough to get to meet and talk to the cast and writers. Mikey now has a crush on the lovely Camille Guaty who let slip she is single. We both like her character of MariCruz on Prison Break and look forward to watching more of her and the other cast members on Las Vegas.  My favorite pic of all was of me and James Lesure he grabbed me in a big hug and just seemed really nice and friendly. It was a very exciting night.

The Paley Center for Media puts on many of these TV evenings every year go to their website www.paleycenter.org to see all upcoming events.