Hi, everyone.
Andy Richter here, podcasting yet again.
I'm actually in the Conan O'Brien Memorial Studio.
(laughs) Oh, no!
(Andy laughing) What happened?
Where did he go?
I don't know.
He's just not here today.
So it's memorial.
We have to think about him in the past tense.
(Liza laughs)
And I wanna tell you this one today
is not gonna pass the Bechdel Test
because we are talking about Conan all the time.
Oh, no, we aren't.
Okay, good. I'm kidding.
No, I'm kidding 'cause we're not really gonna.
But I mean, 'cause--
He might be more boring
to the two of us than to anyone else.
I know.
That's the thing. Except maybe his family.
No, absolutely.
That's the thing.
And I do feel like...
By the way, I'm I'm talking to Liza Powell O'Brien
who's here today to promote
both her new podcast and her play.
Oh, okay.
Aren't you here--
Well, that's over, but we can talk about it, sure.
It's not gonna run anywhere else?
Listen, if anyone out there
would like to produce it--
(Andy laughs) please contact me.
Well, I would but I'm broke because somebody's show ended.
(Liza laughs)
(Andy laughs)
Oh, is that what happened?
Yeah, that's what happened? Oh, no wonder.
It is tempting to...
Oh, you said "oh" about him being boring.
Right.
Yeah, to other people.
I do feel in many ways like I'm his TV wife.
You're his real life wife and I'm his TV wife.
Because being with him for all those years
definitely gave me...
It made me very sympathetic
towards the things that my ex-wife would go through
at parties or out in the world.
Oh, interesting. Of just kind of
all this attention being on me
and then her kind of like, "Oh, hi."
To her and then me, me, me, me, me.
That would happen.
First of all, he's a parade float.
He can't be incognito.
You know that one time...
I think he's talked about this
but we were in Seattle in the winter
where it gets dark at 4:00 in the afternoon.
and he would take these obsessively long bike rides
in the dark in the rain
maybe to escape my family, who could say?
Maybe to porno shops.
Mm, definitely.
And he was once on the bike with the helmet and glasses
so that the rain didn't get in his eyes
and it was dark and he was maybe 50 yards away from a car
and he thought, "Well, now I'll be anonymous."
"Hey, Conan."
Like people driving by he is instantly recognized.
He had a ski helmet.
Yeah, and especially without the hat on,
then he is really--
Well, forget that, yeah.
Yeah, but there were so many people that used to,
if he and I are out in the world,
come up and say, "I love the show.
I watch it all the time.
Can I get a picture with you?"
And then, okay.
And then just like hand the camera to me.
Right, and you are? (laughs)
Yeah. And I'd be like...
In some ways I understand it because I just...
I can understand having experienced people meeting me
and saying, "You're Andy Dick."
Oh, my God.
And being like, "What?
How do you..."
and then realize it's just something with the name.
But then sometimes they really do think like,
"You're Andy Dick.
You were on 'The Ben Stiller Show'" or...
And you're wrong if you try and controvert that, right?
You're like actually, "No."
They don't know you were...
Well, sometimes yeah.
Sometimes they're weird that way
but other times it's just the synapses
get all screwed up 'cause they get excited.
So I never took offense to it.
And also I'm fine with not a lot of attention.
Is that something you've...
Are you fine with not a lot of attention?
I don't know what to do.
The first time that I went to the Emmy's with him in 2000,
I was so nervous about being scrutinized
because I'd never been in any kind of public view at all
and I got out of the car.
Was this when you were just dating?
Yeah, we were just dating. Are you engaged or just--
No, no, just dating.
We'd been dating like four months or something.
I don't know.
Six months, something like that.
And you get out of the car
and there's that gauntlet
of all the stands of the people screaming
and I haven't been in a long time.
I don't know if it's changed, but--
They're on bleachers.
They're on bleachers and there's--
In the hot sun!
And they're making a lot of noise
and the photographers and all the handlers.
And I instantly realized, "Oh, I could burst into flame
and not only would nobody notice.
They certainly would not put me out."
(Andy laughs) I am so beside the point here
and it was actually a great relief
'cause when people say like,
"What superpower would you love to..."
I always wanted to be invisible.
That would've made me feel so comfortable.
And I was tall, early, so I was not usually invisible.
And so, in some ways
he's my invisibility cloak which I love.
So I feel much less self-conscious around him.
Well, tell me about the new podcast.
The new podcast is--
What's it called?
It's called "Significant Others."
And it's historical,
which is right on brand for "Team Coco." (laughs)
(Andy laughs) It is not comedic.
Well, they need to branch out too.
Sure, why not?
Stretch the brand a little.
I'm feeling badly though,
for the people who like followed
because it was a "Team Coco" property.
And then we're like, "When's it gonna get funny?"
But anyway.
So it is telling stories of people
who have been sort of overlooked historically,
especially people who were closely related
to someone who was of significance.
Vera Nabokov, for example,
who saved the manuscript of Lolita from the trash.
Her husband was gonna
burn it twice. Oh, wow.
And she was like, "No, no, no, no.
We're keeping that."
And she was massively important in his life overall.
And they have a fascinating story.
Or Mary Lincoln I think is out next.
And that was actually Conan's suggestion because...
And I was like, "Everybody knows who Mary Lincoln is" and--
Yeah, and she's cuckoo.
Right, and he was like,
"No, but she was actually
really formative for him in the early years."
They were quite a...
He may not have been president
if he hadn't been married.
Right, she's pushed him. Which I hadn't known.
And she had a lot of connections to the south.
Which helped him.
So it's just eight episodes this season.
They're all along those lines.
Not all spouses,
not all stories of the woman behind the man.
I didn't want it to fall into that trope
or just like, "Oh, we're revealing
that this person's actually secretly
been an asshole all this time."
Like there's some elements of that. (laughs)
(Andy laughs) Sure, but you can't avoid it.
But that's not point
of it. And 'cause it's fun.
Right, well, it can be very fun.
So yeah, that's it.
And we have great people
who are voicing the the subjects for us,
like Nick and Megan did the Tolstoys.
Nick Offerman and--
And Megan Mullally.
Mullally, yeah.
And Dan Bucatinsky did Vladimir Nabokov
and Darcy Carden does Vera Nabokov.
Oh, wow!
And Lisa Kudrow does Elliot Kazan's wife.
So, and there's some other fun...
Jack McBrayer's in there a little bit.
Really great people.
We were very lucky to have so many lovely friends.
I'm taking all the friends that Conan has needed
and then gained over all this time and just using them
is essentially what I'm doing.
That's the world--
And don't you think-- Welcome to podcasting.
That you're safe.
Now, listen.
I love leaving the house these days.
We can do it over Zoom.
(Andy laughs)
Do it at home.
Why can't we do it here?
We can also do it here.
Let me get out of the house.
Well, that's great.
How long does each episode take you to write?
Are they half hours?
Are they hours?
The episodes are between 30, 40 minutes
and then the follow- up--
That's the sweet spot.
And then the follow-up episode is usually 25, 20, 25.
And I don't even know how long they take me to write
because they take me so long to write.
I thought when I first talked
to Adam Sachs about doing this, I thought,
"Six months to do them all, maybe nine
if I'm really gonna be persnickety."
That was a year and a half ago. (laughs)
It has been a bit of a hair shirt
but all of my own making.
They're very labor intensive.
That's why I like this podcast is just chatting
because I can't (laughs)
Just, "Homework.
Like why would I sign on for homework?"
I literally was like,
"I have assigned myself eight essays,
long form essays for no class,
no degree, nobody's ever gonna care."
And "Why am I doing this?
I don't know."
That's what I did.
Ah, you gotta do something.
It's you do gotta do something.
That is true. Yeah, you gotta
do something.