When people ask Doug Llewelyn how someone with his Hollywood credentials ended up living in Hendersonville, well, he gives them a Hollywood answer.
“If it weren’t for Burt Reynolds, I wouldn’t be here.”
He offered the quip recently as he sat behind the large desk in his basement office. Llewelyn and his wife, Dale, who’ve been married 55 years, bought their home in the area in 2006, settling here after decades in California. (Llewelyn grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina, near Charlotte.)
Just outside the office entrance are two walls filled with photos of Llewelyn with a multitude of stars, from Perry Como to Sylvester Stallone and from Frank Sinatra to, yes, Burt Reynolds.
Llewelyn’s daughter, Lynn, spent a year as an intern at Reynolds’ dinner theater in Jupiter, Florida, and then the actor asked her to appear in a play he produced at Flat Rock Playhouse. There she met her now-husband, and they decided to live in Western North Carolina.
“When they started having children, my wife didn’t want to be 3,000 miles away, so we came to Hendersonville,” explains Llewelyn, who’s most recognizable for his 1981-1993 stint as the reporter/host of the long-running hit series The People’s Court. The show has been resurrected and revamped several times with a different cast; Llewelyn rejoined the roster in 2016.
The People’s Court isn’t his whole career, though. He’s also appeared in several movies (including National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and All the President’s Men), worked as a news correspondent and magazine-series host for CBS affiliates in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and created the reality-court show Judge Judy, TV’s highest-rated syndicated series. Even certain odd detours have proved newsworthy: Llewelyn produced The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults, starring Geraldo Rivera — a nadir of Rivera’s career after the mobster’s mysterious chambers under a Chicago hotel were revealed to contain … nothing.
Llewelyn is even an inventor, credited with introducing the EPK (electronic press kit), an industry-changing marketing tool.
What’s your work life like right now?
Right now I’m pretty busy because I’m back on The People’s Court and we shoot in Connecticut. It’s a good gig. It’s kind of fun to be back doing it. What really amazes me is that I don’t know anyone else who had a major role on a television series who took a 22-year break [when] the show was still on the air. The People’s Court is in its 33rd year. I did the first 12 with Judge Wapner. When it started, nobody knew if it was going to work. It was a big gamble — and then Wapner became a household name.
How did it happen that you went back?
A year-and-a-half ago I was sitting in the kitchen talking to my wife when the phone rang and it was my very good friend Stu Billett, the executive producer from The People’s Court who had hired me before. He wanted to know if I’d come back to the show. I’m considered the co-host. I interview the litigants when they come in and out of the courtroom, just like I did before. It’s a steady job and something I love to do.
What’s your most memorable episode?
The one where I got bitten on television by a dog. There’s a picture of it over there. A couple had brought their dog in because their neighbor’s child had shot out the dog’s eye with a BB gun and didn’t pay the vet bill. When they came out, I was talking to them and the dog is at knee level and when I moved my knee the dog latched on. We got a lot of publicity out of that. I think I’ve been involved in more than 4,000 lawsuits, but that one is memorable.
What do people ask you when you’re recognized?
They ask what’s the difference being back on The People’s Court. The cases are the same. It’s the same disputes that have always been in small-claims court. The difference is the advent of the smart phone, because you have a camera and the ability to save e-mails and text messages which serve as evidence in your dispute.
How much time do you spend working at home?
When I’m here in town I do a lot of radio here. I have a microphone there, a couple of gizmos here, and I can do Internet radio shows all over the world. I do five half-hour interviews a day. I interview doctors, lawyers, authors, coaches, and all kinds of people.
You have a lot of matchbooks…
I used to collect them. They were very common in those days when we traveled. Every time you’d go to a restaurant or hotel they’d be there. I can check them out and see where I’ve been. There’s a memory in almost every matchbook. I’ve gotten them from all over the country and the world.
What do you do for fun outside of work?
You know, I have my dogs and I’m happy here. I walk the dogs. I love movies. I’m not a sports-minded nut. I never got into golf. I used to get invited to play in tournaments all the time, and I remember I got invited to a big one in Washington and I was encouraged to go do it. I went to take lessons from the pro at the Congressional Country Club, and after two days he gave up on me.