When Morgan asked where Blake was living, the actor appeared to draw on an answer he gave in 1993 to Entertainment Weekly: "I live in an apartment. I told you, I'm broke. I couldn't buy spats for a hummingbird."

At other times, Blake took profanity-infused lines directly from his book, according to excerpts published online, delivering them almost verbatim, including an explanation of how he lost the civil suit brought by Bakley's family.

"They didn't win it, I lost it. I went up there, suicidal, to lose that," he told Morgan.

He went on to call Morgan "Charlie Potatoes" or "Charlie" during the interview, taking a line from the 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones" that describes a man who is rich and popular.

"You're just like the cops. There's no place to get. Keep him in jail until he dies because everybody who's dead is guilty," he told Morgan, again using language from his book.

Twitter -- the closest thing to an instant barometer of public opinion -- exploded with reaction.

"To my friend Charlie Potatoes: Great TV! Better you than me," former talk show host Arsenio Hall tweeted.

Morgan, himself, tweeted: "Incredible interview. I'd cast him in a movie with Charlie Sheen tomorrow."

Morgan also asked Blake about his wife's background.

"I think she was a con artist, yes," Blake said. "I think she came to Hollywood to con her way into show business."

Blake also said he "didn't know here well enough to know her."

"I love her - well, I love you as a human being. You're my brother in arms," he told Morgan during the interview. "We're all in this thing together. But we were not dramatically in love or things like that."

Blake is best known for his role as a tough-talking detective in the 1970s TV show "Baretta" and his Oscar-nominated performance as condemned killer in the 1967 movie "In Cold Blood." He began his career as a child actor, starring as a Mickey in the "Our Gang" movie shorts.