The actor: Depending on your frame of reference to his work, your first reaction to seeing Andy Richter as a subject of this interview feature may be to ask, “Wait, you mean Conan’s jovial, snark-filled sidekick? Are we sure that even counts as acting?” It sure does. But even if it didn’t, there’s been far more to Richter’s career than just his work alongside Conan O’Brien. Surely his work in the iconic ’90s comedy Cabin Boy alone would be enough to earn him a chance to be interviewed for Random Roles, but beyond that, he’s been directed by Robert Altman (Dr. T And The Women), headlined three TV series (Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Quintuplets, and Andy Barker, P.I.), and popped up on a plethora of sitcoms, including Arrested Development, The New Adventures Of Old Christine, and 30 Rock.
More recently, however, Richter has been doing a fair amount of work off-camera, including his long-running podcast The Three Questions With Andy Richter, but he can currently be heard fronting his own call-in radio show on SiriusXM, cleverly titled The Andy Richter Call-In Show. He detailed how this new show came about and how he envisions it playing out, but fear not: in addition to discussing his latest endeavor, he also delved into the previously mentioned projects, plus several others.
The A.V. Club: How did this call-in show come about? Was it something that they pitched to you, or did you pitch it to them?
Andy Richter: Yeah, they pitched it to me. Conan sold the Team Coco podcast company to SiriusXM, and up ’til now, the Conan O’Brien Channel has been podcasts on the radio. But SiriusXM is a radio company, and I think they wanted to start making some radio programming that could be podcasts. Because they were looking for something else for me to do in addition to my podcast (The Three Questions), just to kind of… I mean, my podcast has been on for a while, so they were looking for something like a little more… jazzy smack to it. And they pitched a call-in show, and I was, like, “Sure! That’s like playing DJ!” [Laughs.] Sure, I’ll be a radio host for an hour a week and sit at a switchboard and… I mean, I don’t really actually push any buttons to take the calls. But I could, I guess!
AVC: As you said, you’ve been hosting The Three Questions for a while now, but as far as call-in shows go, was there any particular template that you were trying to follow, any other such shows that you were a fan of?
AR: Well, I mean, I’ve been listening to Howard Stern for over 30 years now, and as he’s evolved, he’s just become an amazing interviewer. So he was definitely an influence on me in terms of Three Questions, which is an hour sort of interview format that’s meant to be… amusing introspection, I guess, is what you might call it. And I’m not directly trying to be Howard Stern, but I think that I have, just by osmosis, listened to him and his long interviews for long enough to sort of get an idea of how he sets people at ease and how he gets them to open up. So I’ve basically just tried to get that kind of feel.
And then for years and years… I mean, one of my favorite parts of his show is when somebody calls in with some ridiculous thing where, like, they’re cheating on their spouse or they stole something. You get people calling in with the most outrageous things. “Should I become a swinger?” [Laughs.] And it’s always interesting. And I also thought… I mean, y’know, everybody’s got stories about family reunion disasters or public humiliation stories. We say, “Don’t make it too heavy,” but, like, I just recorded an episode of dating disasters with Sona Movsesian, Conan’s current sidekick and former assistant, and everybody’s got a good story. So I just kind of wanted to inspire those kinds of calls and that kind of talk from people. Because it’s such a fun thing when you’re at a party and people are talking about witnessing scenes in a restaurant, blow-ups in a restaurant, and everybody’s like, “Well, I saw something once…” So I want to try and inspire that kind of conversation.
I mean, we’ve only done a few shows so far. We’ve recorded a few of them, and we’re going to do some of them live as it goes on, but it’s kind of difficult when you’re on satellite radio once a week to get a live show going. People have to get more aware of it before we really start going live. So we’ve recorded some of them, and it will evolve. That’s kind of what we’re doing now. I’m thinking of different ways to bring a little bit more to it than just the freeform. But it may stay this way. If we get enough calls and good enough funny stories, it might just be an hour of people calling in. Maybe we’ll get to a conversation about funny things that happened at a funeral, then people will call in with their funny funeral stories. [Laughs.]
AVC: As far as your back catalog goes, normally I’d focus in on the first thing you did on camera, but before that, I think there was an even more important role, which was playing Mike Brady in The Real Live Brady Bunch.
AR: Yeah, it was pretty pivotal, just in the sense that it got me out of Chicago. There was a show I was part of… Well, I worked with a few different groups in Chicago, improv mostly, and one of the groups is a group called the Annoyance Theater. They’re still there in Chicago doing shows. And there was a show there called The Real Live Brady Bunch, which… the main thing was a reenactment—with an attempt to be as true to the original as possible—of old Brady Bunch episodes, performed by adults playing all the roles. And it also was preceded by an audience-participation game show that was really fun. So it was a full evening, and it was very timely. It was in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and at the same time, there was kind of a ’70s disco revival, like a nostalgia wave that hit, so bell bottoms and Qiana shirts were coming back, people were wearing them as costumes. So it was timely, but it was also very funny.
When I first heard about it, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, but then I saw the first one they did… I wasn’t in it, but I saw it, and it was about as hard as I’d ever laughed in the theater. It was just really funny. Because there were very, very talented people doing it. And then it quickly became very popular, and everybody who was part of the theater would get involved. It was just on Tuesday nights, but we would do two shows, and they were sold out. It became a real sort of sensation. There was a story in People magazine about the show. And then I got taken to New York, and then from New York to L.A. And when it moved to Chicago from New York, the guy who was playing Mike Brady at the time was unable to go to New York, so I sort of stuck my nose in and said, “Hey, I’ll be Mike Brady!”
So I got to go to New York. And that’s where I got my first agent. I hadn’t even had an agent in Chicago. I tried to, but I just didn’t get one. But I got an agent in New York, and I started auditioning in New York, and then when we moved the show to L.A., because of my New York agent, I already had an L.A. agent, and everything just kind of built from there. So it was really sort of the beginning of me actually doing this for a living, as opposed to just my parents wondering what the hell I was doing with myself.
AR: That happened while I was in L.A. doing The Brady Bunch, and I went in and auditioned for the director, Michael Ritchie, who’s a very known and very well-respected director. He did the movie Smile, which is sort of an Altman-esque look at beauty pageants. And I went in, and… I had a small part as the sheriff’s deputy. It was part of a little montage of sheriff deputies. So I read, and I had to have sort of a Texas accent, and he said, “Yes! Oh, this is great! Yeah, one of the cops could be young! Yeah, yeah!” And he just gave me the job right then. And it shot on a Saturday at, like, a high school up in the valley, and I went up and did it, and it took about two hours, and… I felt like I won a contest or something!
My first professional scene on film was with Swoosie Kurtz and Beau Bridges, and I had no idea what I was doing, and I just kind of kept my head low and was… [Starts to laugh.] Y’know, they did Beau Bridges and Swoosie Kurtz’s closeups first, and then it was time to get my closeups, and they said, “Coming around!” And I was, like, “What’s ‘coming around’ mean?” Which just means moving the camera to the other side of the room to shoot me! And I’d been to film school! But I hadn’t encountered real professional filmmaking like that yet.
And the other thing I remember from that is that I had a rubber dummy gun that was in my holster, and when the prop guy gave it to me, he gave me a very stern talking-to about how don’t play with it, don’t take it out, and even though it’s a rubber dummy gun, if he sees me taking it out, he would have me sent home immediately without pay. Which made an impression on me about gun safety on the set that stuck with me, and it stuck with me forever. Whenever I’ve had to handle a gun on set, I’ve always been very, very careful and followed that initial snap of “don’t fuck around or you’re going home,” and I’ve tried to maintain that.
AVC: You used the term “Altman-esque” a moment ago. You actually got to work with Robert Altman on Dr. T And The Women.
AR: Yeah, I did! That was towards the end of my time with Conan. I was getting ready to leave the Late Night show, and this kind of just happened concurrently with that. And they gave me time off, because it was already known that I was gonna be leaving, but I didn’t actually have to take that much time off. But I went down to Dallas and I made this Robert Altman movie, and… Robert Altman was truly one of my cinematic heroes. And I’m not even a big hero-worship kind of guy, but he was somebody that I always really responded to his work and just him as a person.
I had been warned that Robert Altman was interested in me for a role, which I couldn’t believe, and then one night at home in New York the phone rang, and I picked it up, and it was, “Hey, this is Robert Altman!” And he’d been on the show once, but we just sort of said hello. And I didn’t even remember this, but he said, “I threatened you that I’d hire you one day!” I think maybe Conan had said, like, “You should hire Andy! He’s a good actor!” Which he did a couple of times, and I was always, like, “Take it easy, Grandma, don’t embarrass me in front of the guests.” [Laughs.] But he said, “I warned you, and now I want you to be in this movie!” So it was Dr. T And The Women, which Richard Gere was the star of, and I got to go down to Dallas and be in a Robert Altman movie!
The most formative thing about that was just seeing how Robert Altman works, which is… [Hesitates.] I got the feeling that he just made movies because he wanted to make movies. You got the sense that anybody could make up whatever line they wanted, and he was, like, “Yeah, all right!” There was supposed to be a part for a child, and one of the actresses in the movie sort of very presumptuously said, “Well, my daughter’s gonna be in the movie!” And he was, like, “Yeah, all right! Okay! No problem!” So this woman got her daughter into the movie and then talked to the actress who played the nanny as if she was the nanny and sort of wanted her to watch her daughter while she was on set! Somebody had to explain to her, “No, that’s not… She’s not really a nanny. She’s just playing one in the movie.”
But also, too, something that struck me was how many members of his family worked for him. And not because they weren’t unemployable anywhere else. I mean, they were all very talented professionals in all different departments. His art director was his son, and a son worked in the camera department and… all over the set! And I thought that that was very striking, because as I said, these people worked elsewhere when Robert Altman wasn’t shooting. Because I’ve worked for my parents and… it’s tough. [Laughs.] So the fact that his adult children were happy to work for him, it really spoke volumes about him as a person. And he also was just an absolute mensch. Just fun and… he was one of those old people that did not seem like an old person. It did not feel like you were talking to an old person. It felt like you were talking to a peer. So it was really a thrill to get to know him and to get to work with him and to kind of become friends with him.
AVC: How was it for you to be first on the call sheet for the first time with Andy Richter Controls The Universe?
AR: Um, it was… [Long pause.] I mean, I set out to do it because I knew I could. That was sort of the idea. I’d been on the Conan show for seven years and I was just kind of antsy and, well, I was ambitious. I thought, “You know, I could certainly go to L.A. and do a sitcom and be the star of it and help write it.” So that’s what I set out to do, and that’s what I did. And that happened three times. I was the star of three network shows. And I realized I don’t really care that much about being the star of the show… and, in fact, I’m probably better suited to being further down the call sheet just because you have to put up with so much bullshit as number one. And I don’t have an ego that needs it.
It mattered more by the time I got to Andy Barker, P.I., which was a show that I did that Conan created and that Jonathan Groff—who had been the head writer for Conan when I left—he was the showrunner on the show. So it was very much a collaboration, and I had a lot of input into that show. But with Andy Richter Controls The Universe, I think in my mind I thought, “Well, if I’m number one on the call sheet, if I’m the star of the show, then things’ll be run my way.” And I realized very quickly that, no, no, that isn’t the way it runs at all. [Laughs.] I mean, you can get some things, but you have to kind of pick your battles, for sure, because if you’re just constantly demanding that things be a certain way… And I’m not even talking about a fancy trailer or anything. I just mean, like, “I think that this episode needs a different ending,” or, “I don’t like the direction that this character’s going.” You know, more just sort of things that have to do with the quality of the comedy.
I didn’t have as much say in it as I might’ve liked, so I kind of think maybe the hassle of being the star of the show… Y’know, I’d rather be the guy that runs the show than the guy that has the most lines. And time has taught me that what I really like doing is making stuff. I like being part of a good creative team, and I like making good stuff. And as I say, there’s a lot of bullshit involved. There’s a lot of meetings, and a lot of people whose names you have to know. I had seven years of being wonderfully, blissfully ignorant of a lot of how the sausage gets made. [Laughs.] I just got to kind of focus on being funny and what happens during the show and the writing of the show and the taping of the show. But a lot of the extracurricular, sort of more business network-y kind of things, I was really just happily, happily left out of a lot of that process. And I had to deal with a lot more of it when I was the star of a network sitcom, and… it’s not my thing.
Like I said, I like making the thing, but there’s a lot of shit in television that doesn’t have to do with making the thing, it has to do with selling the thing or politicizing the thing or angling your way in the thing. And that’s just not of that much interest to me. And I’m not built for it very well.
AVC: Well, for what it’s worth, when I put out to the readers that I was going to be talking to you, all three of your series came up from various people, wanting to know about your experiences on them. So they still have their fanbases even now.
AR: Oh, good! Well, Andy Richter Controls The Universe was really fun and really good, and I really liked it. It was very much an education in network politics and learning how the quality of the product is probably like seventh or eighth on the list of what matters in terms of its survival. Like, there’s all kinds of things that are way more important than whether or not the comedy is funny.
And then Quintuplets, I was just an actor on that. And that… had its difficulties. Because, quite frankly, I was kind of kept out of the creative process of writing that show, which I just felt like, “Look, you’re lifting things, I have a strong back, I’ve proven that I have a strong back, why don’t you let me lift things with you?” And it’s also insulting, because I have a fairly developed sense of my own worth, in terms of making television comedy. Y’know, I’ve been around the block, and I don’t think I have bad instincts. Quite the opposite. I’m trying to be humble here. [Laughs.] But I just feel like, if you’re making a funny show, you ought to ask me what I think. And for the first… I think we did 22 of those, and for the first 12 or 13, it was made patently clear that my input wasn’t needed… until I gave a couple of suggestions that became plotlines for episodes. And then I was asked, “Well, have you got anything more?” And I just was, like, “No, that’s it, that’s all I’ve got.” Because it’s, like, if you keep me out and if you didn’t listen when the writers are pitching jokes, then… Yeah, you don’t need me then. I’ll say the lines that you give me.
And then Andy Barker, P.I. was a joy. Andy Barker, P.I. was probably the biggest disappointment, because it was such good show. It was definitely my favorite of the three, and you could not have had a more… [Hesitates.] In terms of if the cast was an engine, every cylinder was firing perfectly. It was an amazing cast of people, and there was so much potential to make more of that show. And it was just kind of squandered by the network. One person in L.A. said “no,” and then New York asked G.E., “Can we get the money to make this show that Conan O’Brien created?” And they went, “Yeah, all right. Yeah, do midseason!” But I think that the person who initially said “no” was just, like, “Okay, fine, go make your five or six episodes! But I said ‘no.’ So fuck you, and go ahead and have G.E. give you whatever, five million dollars, to make a few episodes. But you’re dead in the fucking water.” And that’s certainly the way it was treated, which is just… dumb. It’s just dumb.
I think sometimes the alpha males, if they know that the offspring of other apes become successful under your watch, then somehow it’ll reflect poorly on you, so you must kill those other offspring. Which… if that show had been given a chance and had succeeded, and there’s always the chance that it could’ve, because nobody knows exactly what’s gonna happen… But it was put in on, like, four different timeslots for six episodes. It was just absurd. It was hamstrung from the beginning, and it was just never given a chance. Conan actually wrote an email to the head of the network and said, “We gave you what could’ve been a winning hand, and you folded before you even anted. You didn’t even play the cards!” And it was just very frustrating, because it could’ve really been something. And if it had been something, the guy who said “no” would’ve gotten the credit for it anyway! It’s just dumb. Just dumb!
AR: That was really a fun experience. Because I was doing the Conan show on TBS at the time, I didn’t have a lot of time to do other stuff, so it was my biggest COVID job. But it was a COVID set, where there were different people in different pods. Like, the art department couldn’t talk to me except by walkie-talkie.
But that job was unique because my teenage son got it for me, because when they were putting that show together, my ex-wife is a writer, and somebody emailed her. My son is gay, and he was in high school at the time… or maybe just getting out of high school. I can’t even remember exactly. But I think there was a general sort of, hey, does anybody of this writer’s friend group have any gay teens who would be willing to talk to us about what it’s like to be a gay teen? And my ex-wife asked my son, and my son and his boyfriend said, “Yeah!” And they went in and talked to the writing staff of Love, Victor, and the writing staff kind of picked their brains for about an hour and a half, and they were very grateful. There was a lot of useful stuff, and I think a lot of stuff made it to the show, just little bits of detail.
And when it came time to cast the basketball coach, somebody went, “Well, hey, Will’s dad is an actor! Why don’t we just cast him?” So I got the job as the basketball coach, and… [Starts to laugh.] A number of the principal cast members were supposed to be excellent basketball players… and they weren’t. So they hired some featured extras who had basketball skills, and one of them was Charlie Hall, who is Brad Hall and Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ son, who had actually played basketball for Northwestern. And he’s also a very talented, funny actor, so they made him a regular in the show… and when they made him a regular, they named him Kieran, which is my son’s boyfriend’s name! So my son and his boyfriend’s influence is all over that show, including me getting the work!
AVC: That’s awesome.
AR: Yeah, and it was a great place to work, and really a fun job.
AR: Well, that was good because I got to murder. [Laughs.] I got to pistol whip somebody. And I think I got to poison somebody else. I don’t know, I don’t remember exactly. But, no, that was fun, because I don’t get to… I play the nice guy, the friend, or kind of the idiot, and I don’t really get to play the heavy very much. So it was a lot of fun to be able to play the nice guy who’s also a murderer. And that show is its own excellent animal and full of just talented, talented people. So it was really a joy to get to do that. And they did a movie for Peacock just recently, and they did a “For Your Consideration” sort of night for Emmys, and there was a Q&A, and I got to moderate the Q&A. And they might even have shown the full episode of me murderin’ people before that, I think! But it was just a great job. And Tony Shalhoub’s just incredible. It’s a show about murder that also warms your heart. There’s not a lot of those.
AVC: I should’ve mentioned this a minute ago when you brought up Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but you had a nice recurring run on The New Adventures Of Old Christine.
AR: Yes! “Sad Dad” was my nickname. [Laughs.] That was a lot of fun, too, because she’s just brilliant. And kind of one of my current heroes. Somebody who’s actually still doing it. And she’s just so fantastic. And just such an amazing, wonderful person. I’ve worked with almost her whole family now at this point, because I was in a movie that Chelsea Peretti directed that Brad Hall was in. So I’m going through the whole clan!
But that was just really great. That was a very funny show, and it was just fun to get to go on there. And I know it was concurrent with when I was shooting Talladega Nights, because I have a mustache. I have a sad, shitty mustache, which is the only kind of mustache I can grow, and it’s the only time I’ve ever had one. Because I had a beard for Talladega Nights, and I just grew the mustache so I wouldn’t have to have a paste-on mustache. Because that’s the part that falls off all day when you drink coffee or eat lunch. So I just grew the mustache for convenience’s sake, and I shaved it immediately. But I know in at least one of the episodes of Old Christine I have the mustache. And I know there’s also a shot of her and me in bed, because online once Chris Evans—fuckin’ Captain America!—was talking about how much he was in love with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and I was able to just send him a screengrab of her and me in bed. For a fleeting moment, I made Captain America envious!
AR: Oh, well, that was another pivotal one, because it was a chance to really be funny. And Chris Elliott was… I mean, Chris Elliott, especially at that time, it was so exciting and such a big deal to get to work with him in this movie. And that part… You know, I had done the one little movie in the cheerleader-murdering mom movie we talked about, and I had auditioned for the director, Adam Resnick, and I knew I did a good job, but it was right at the end of my time in L.A. doing The Real Live Brady Bunch. And when it ended in L.A., I went back to Chicago and… it was around Christmastime, I think, and I was sleeping on my mom’s couch, wondering what in the hell I was gonna do with myself. And I got a callback to be in Cabin Boy.
I had no money for a plane ticket, and… [Starts to laugh.] My uncle had backed his work truck into my mother’s car. And she took the insurance check that was supposed to pay for her to fix her bumper and tail light and got me the cheapest Southwest ticket—it had, like, four stops on the way to L.A. —and I flew out to L.A. I slept on a friend’s futon and bought stuff to make lasagna, and I made a big foil pan of lasagna that I ate pretty much at every meal for a week while I was there. And they called me back like… I wanna say three times. They kept calling me back and saying, “We need to see you again.” And I know that Adam wanted me to just do it, but I think they were trying to convince other people because I was an “unknown.” And by the third time I said, “Look, I’ve gotta go. I’m running out of lasagna, so you’ve gotta make up your mind.” Which was sort of an early lesson in how setting your own boundaries usually is not a bad thing.
But the other things I remember… There’s the part, “Here’s how a harem girl dances,” because he’s like a man-child. I just had the sense that, y’know, what you do here is what’s gonna get you the job. And I know that they probably looked at a thousand different people doing their own interpretation of that, but I was just, like, “This is a chance to do something weird and different.” And I’m sure people did a lot of fairly uncreative stuff… That’s me being a dick. [Laughs.] But I’ve also been on the other end of auditioning things, and people do tend to make the same choices, and then you get the few people that make interesting choices. And I just decided to play it as a horny toddler, I guess, and I think that they really appreciated that, and that’s what got me the job. And that was a thrill. That brought me back out to L.A., and that was really a turning point in feeling like, “Okay, I can do this for a living.”
AVC: Were you on set when David Letterman asked his now-famous question, “Would you like to buy a monkey?”
AR: I was not. I wasn’t at work that day. And that was on location somewhere, too. That wasn’t in the studio. The first time I met David Letterman was… [Hesitates.] Because after Cabin Boy, I got the job on Late Night, and we were upstairs on the 9th floor while Dave was finishing up his run on NBC. And one of his last shows, Chris Elliott was a guest, and I went down to hang out with Chris in his dressing room, which actually ended up being my dressing room for the first three or four years of the show. And I was hanging out with him when Dave came in, and… that was the first time I met Dave!
AVC: When you did Arrested Development, you played a multitude of characters… sort of.
AR: I did. I was friends with Jim Vallely, who’s kind of Mitch Hurwitz’s lieutenant, his right-hand man. And Jim’s an incredibly funny writer who’s been around for a long time. I think Jim and Mitch both worked on The Golden Girls together, which is one of the best joke machines in the history of television. The jokes on that show are just unbelievable. So I knew Jim, and then I knew Will Arnett, too, because he was married to my friend Amy Poehler at the time…or maybe they were engaged. And then I also knew David Cross from just kind of… around. And while I was making the show Quintuplets, which… could be less than fulfilling, they were making the first season of Arrested a five-minute walk away on a different stage on the Fox lot. And I used to go over there and hang out in Will’s trailer, or sometimes in Mitch Hurwitz’s trailer. I got to know Mitch and got friendly with Mitch. And I just would go over there and hang out and be sort of like, “I wish I could be on this show.” [Laughs.]
So they first gave me just a little cameo. They literally came and picked me up in a golf cart from the Quintuplets set and I went and shot it in about 45 minutes, and then they drove me back. I didn’t even have to leave the lot. And then they told me… [Pauses.] Look, they knew that, like I said, I was dissatisfied with working on the show Quintuplets, and they would tease me a little bit about it. So the reason that I’m playing quintuplets on Arrested Development is because it’s a dig. It’s them making fun of something that I was unhappy about. If Mitch Hurwitz loves you, he loves you, but he also will put you in something and make you the biggest fucking loser in town. [Laughs.] Which, if you look at that, every cameo on that show is somebody that, if they’re playing a version of themselves, it’s not flattering!
In one of the later ones, I was with Carl Weathers. I worked with Carl Weathers, and he’s playing Carl Weathers, and everybody keeps confusing him with Cuba Gooding, Jr. and then being disappointed when they figure out that it’s Carl Weathers. And one point… Because, I mean, I’m from this world of assholes. I’m used to people tearing each other down for sport. But I was, like, “Is this okay with you that they’re kind of playing rough?” And Carl said, “Well, it doesn’t feel great. But I know they like me, and it’s a fun show to work on, so…” [Shrugs.] That was just part of Arrested Development.
Also, too, quite frankly, at that point, that was when Arrested—and I’ve been on shows like this—because the people that are making the material get in love with the material, they have a hard time cutting it. So they were shooting episodes… They’re 22-minute episodes, and some of the scripts were up to 40 pages long. It’s about a page a minute. So there was kind of this atmosphere—I heard painters talking about it—where they’d get script changes and they’d paint a set, and they’d have to stay there until 4 am painting the set, and then five hours later it was decided, “Oh, no, we scrapped that. We’re moving on.” And for the actors, too! Learning lines and doing scenes and feeling like, “Well, there’s about a one in three chance that all of this work is not gonna be seen.” So it tended to be, I think, a little bit frustrating for a lot of people. But that show had more funny ideas in it than 10 of most other shows, so I can understand why it would be difficult for them to kill their own ideas just for the sake of time.
AVC: Pray tell, do you have a Pootie Tang story?
AR: Um… [Long pause.] Well, not really, other than the fact that that was Kristen Bell’s screen debut, playing my daughter. So I’ve known her now for years. And I didn’t even realize… Like, I was aware of Kristen Bell, the actress who was showing up in things, and it wasn’t until we met later when she was, like, “You were my dad!” And I was, like, “Oh, shit, that’s right, that was you!” I hadn’t put two and two together. Because, y’know, that was a little cameo role that I shot by myself in one day. Oh, but the other thing that I do remember… Because it was shot, I think, at a stage in Queens, and I went out to lunch with Chris Rock and J.B. Smoove and a few other people to a Chinese buffet. [Laughs.] That was a fun lunch.
AVC: Do you have a favorite bit of voice work that you’ve done over the years?
AR: Well, Mort from Madagascar really had legs. I mean, I was in three feature films, and then two animated shows that were spun off from it. In fact, the first spin-off… [Starts to laugh.] Penguins Of Madagascar, which was on Nickelodeon, I didn’t even know about until James Patrick Stuart, who played my friend on Andy Richter Controls The Universe, texted me that he had just auditioned to be me! And I was, like, “What?!” He said, “Yeah, they’re doing a cartoon of Madagascar!” And I immediately got on the phone to my manager and my agent was, like, “By the way, let them know that I’m available to continue being me!” Because I guess they had been stunt-casting a lot of the other roles in the films and, y’know, Sasha Baron Cohen was not gonna do it, or Cedric the Entertainer was not gonna do it. They were far too busy. And I was, like, “I am not too busy! I’m more than happy to be in a cartoon!”
And honestly, doing cartoon voices… I’ve hosted game shows and I’ve done cartoon voices, and those are honestly about… Like, I get as much of a kick out of that and a thrill out of that as I do being a comedy actor or writing funny things. I just can’t even believe that I get to be a game show host and do cartoon voices. But, yeah, Mort was a fun voice, and I got to do a number of voices on that show. And nobody knows that I do it, either, because it’s so different from me.
AVC: Well, at least one reader pointedly posted a GIF of Mort with just the word “feeeeeeet.”
AR: Oh, yes. That was a later thing. That was for the King Julien series [All Hail King Julien], which was… for Netflix, I think? I can’t even remember. But, yeah, there was a whole foot-fetish thing that happened where I was, like, “Uh, are kids really gonna get this?” [Laughs.]
AVC: Do you have a favorite one-off appearance you’ve made during your various TV guest spots?
AR: Oh, gosh, let me think… [Long pause.]
AVC: If you don’t, I can always give you the one that was most asked about.
AR: Yeah, tell me that one.
AVC: Playing Mitch Lemon on 30 Rock.
AR: Oh, that was really great. I mean, I’m just glad I got to be a part of that show, because that was such a fun, funny show. And Tina Fey is a national treasure. So I was very flattered to do that bit. And just to be on that set, working with all those people.
AVC: How was it to have Buck Henry playing your father?
AR: It was amazing to get to work with Buck, too, but… at one point I think he misunderstood a joke that I was making. Like, he and I were goofing around, and he had a line that was something like, “There’s no more fun party than a Lemon party!” It was a joke about the Lemon Party meme, if you remember that. It refers to a video of three elderly men having sex. And he took offense about something. Honestly, I don’t remember specifically, but I seem to remember that we were joking about the Lemon Party and old men having sex or something, and I think he took offense to it because he thought we were talking about him. And I was absolutely mortified. But it wasn’t exactly a situation where I felt like I could go, “Oh, listen, Buck Henry, I wasn’t saying that you’re impotent…” [Laughs.] There was just no way to dig yourself out of it, so I just went, “Oh, shit, now Buck Henry thinks I was making fun of his sexual prowess or something…”
AVC: I figured I’d save the Conan years for last, since it’s the area of your career that’s the most traversed, but how do you look back at your experiences working with him as his announcer/sidekick?
AR: I mean, I’m not religious, but I don’t know of a better word than to say that I was blessed to get to do it. I was just lucky and thrilled and… I’m not being Pollyanna-ish and saying that I didn’t deserve to be there, because I think I do a good job when I’m hired, but I also did learn how to be on TV and make television, and it’s that show that made me a professional. Y’know, as I say, I worked hard, but I do have Conan to thank for it, because he was generous enough to allow somebody with a similar skill set to sit next to him for all those years. And he also was generous enough to allow me to be a big part of the creative process of that show, which is sort of the less-visible part of my contribution. He and I were sort of, as I said before, the last step in the quality control process, and I learned how to, on the day of, get comedy and bits ready to go out the door and to be good. I learned how to make good comedy on that show.
And it also gave me an experience that very few people have, of having been on something that’s very meaningful to young people who are in comedy and who are serious about comedy in the same way that, when I was a young person and was serious about comedy, there were shows that were sort of guiding lights for me. I got to be a part of something that is that for young, up-and-coming funny people, and that is pretty special. You can’t put a price on that. It’s meaningful in our silly little world.
AVC: I know that Conan actually had to fight to keep you on the show initially.
AR: He did. Yeah, there was… [Starts to laugh.] Somebody called me… It was something like, “That weird fat fuck,” or something like that.
AVC: I, uh, believe the specific quote you’re looking for is “get rid of that big fat dildo.” Just for the record.
AR: Yeah, yeah, “big fat dildo.” Yeah, do you know who said that?
AVC: That was Warren Littlefield, I believe.
AR: Okay, I was gonna let you say it, because Warren Littlefield still gives TV jobs, so I didn’t want to be the one who said it.
AVC: It’s my understanding that he said it, anyway.
AR: Yes, you are 100% correct in that understanding. And I was not aware of that until after the fact. I mean, Conan’s not mean. [Laughs.] But even at the time when he told me—and if he had told me at the time—I would’ve been amused. I mean, the way I always looked at it was, the funniest people in the world that I know seem to think I’m funny, too, so… what the fuck does some guy with an MBA know?
