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It's not every day that Brian Williams interviews a hermit crab shell on "Rock Center" -- especially not Marcel the Shell, a talking one-eyed shell with over 17 million hits on Youtube.
Marcel the Shell is a bona fide celebrity, having built his stardom on short films where he talks about what happens when he eats a piece of cheese ("My cholesterol went up to 900") and what he uses to tie his skis to his car ("a hair").
Williams traveled to Brooklyn to sit down with Marcel, and his creators Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer-Camp. The couple created him in the aftermath of Slate's stint on "Saturday Night Live," which ended after she accidentally dropped the f-bomb on air. So far, the alternative path seems to be working out: Marcel the Shell has his own book, and is well on his way to getting a TV show.
Marcel has plenty of spunk, which he brought to his interview with Williams. When asked if having just one eye has affected him in any way, Marcel returned, "Has having one nose affected you in any way, Brian?"
The conversation made Williams chortle. He even hinted that he and his colleagues could learn a thing or two from Marcel. "A lot of network primetime shows would kill for 14 million plus viewers," Williams said. "When the second installment hit the web, it had more viewers by its first night than a lot of popular cable news shows and it's already up to three million."
"Rock Center" debuted in November with 4.1 million total viewers.