My next guest,
you know him if you're watching this channel,
he needs no introduction.
Please welcome Andy Richter.
Hi, Moses.
Thank you for having me.
We were taping, so I'm in the courtyard of Largo.
So you will hear some traffic noise.
I hear a lot of traffic.
It sounds very-
I feel like the man on the street.
The last time we talked
was when we were still doing the show for audiences,
and you were telling me that, on the old stages,
you had a place where you could just go and disappear.
Have you found a place there at the Largo,
where you could just completely disappear?
Well, this courtyard is nice.
(car engine rumbling)
It's noisy, but it's nice.
And I come out here when Conan is doing interviews,
the Zoom interviews, because I just don't want to make...
I'm certainly not going to listen to the interview because-
No, it's a speaker phone conversation.
Yeah, he talked to Colin Quinn today,
and I heard everything that guy had to say in 1995.
Enough with the Colin Quinn.
I'm just kidding. (laughing)
Do you know there's different races of people in New York
and they came over at different times?
No, I love him, but honestly,
no, I stay out of there just so I don't have to worry about
if I get up, or that the old seats in the theater will clank
or something.
'Cause when I first started here with them,
I was in there for one of them,
and I just was like, "I'm too clumsy,
"I should be out here just so I don't interrupt."
But yeah, but also too, this place,
I've known this place for a million years.
I mean, and I've known everybody here for 20 plus years.
So I was always very comfortable in this place,
even before we started doing "The Conan Show" here.
Yeah, because for people who don't know,
this is the hub of essentially all comedy,
where you can really work out stuff
before it becomes a special,
people have taped their specials there.
So it is a cool spot.
So the place that you've found to disappear to
is the Central Courtyard?
(laughing) Yes, yes.
Although, you know what?
I mean, it's a different thing.
'Cause I'm not here.
If I need to hide in the hour that I'm here,
I got real problems.
I shouldn't be on television if I'm that-
Right.
(laughing) If I'm, yeah.
If I need to hide that much.
Yeah, yeah.
But this is how you got roped into this show.
You were just too central.
You were outside, you were not smoking.
And they're like, "Hey, there's this kid
"that did stand up once."
They asked me, and then when I found out what time it was,
it was like, I just did it here.
Rather than, normally I would be at home,
in my sad, dark little box that I live in.
But here it's, like I said, I feel like a man on the street.
That is something I've noticed.
I think people, when they do the show for the first time
they're like, "Oh, I hope Conan likes me."
Immediately I was like, I hope Andy doesn't scowl at me.
'Cause I think, and please tell me if I'm wrong,
I feel like you watch stand up
like comedians watch stand up.
Conan's very gracious and like,
"Let's keep the show on the rails,
"even if you're bombing."
But you, you feel like you know the mechanics of it,
of like, "Uh-huh, yeah, that happened, sure."
On "The Conan Show,"
and Conan has said this, and and God bless him.
He never wanted me to be any different,
but you know I will sort of laugh
as a conversational lubricant.
Yeah.
But most of the time,
I laugh when I think something's funny,
which I guess is unusual.
And I definitely felt when I went from New York to LA
and came out here and had to go through the sitcom process
of the table read and then the rehearsals and everything
where everyone laughs real hard at everything
over and over again.
Way too hard.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I just feel like you're crying wolf.
Like you're ultimately going to not be able
to tell the difference between
that's really funny and that's just okay.
And I would have other writers say things to me like,
"You're not a big laugher, are you?"
(laughing) And I say, "Well, yeah, actually,
"when things are funny."
When things are funny,
when you're not looking at a math equation.
Yeah, and I'm not trying to be a dick
I'm not trying to be a dick.
But I just think I'm trying to be honest
about that one part of it.
And because I always have felt that this kind of job,
doing a late night talk show like this,
you have to be yourself.
You can't, you're yourself when company's over,
but you gotta be yourself.
If you're going to be fake laughing, fake re-reacting,
it's going to suck.
You know?
And I just also just don't want to do that.
I think that's what I was nervous about
the second time I did the show.
'Cause you guys are more front face-ting on stools there
is you can see,
and you know that you know all the mechanics,
you know the punchline before it's coming,
you know that you were not
on a bus in Australia this morning.
And also (laughing) to be fair to the stand-ups,
a lot of times, that's the end of our day pretty much.
And it's easy to zone out.
Yeah.
It sounds really shitty,
and it probably is kind of shitty, but I guess I'm shitty.
No, I think it takes some of the mystery out of it,
and I think it makes people less nervous to do the show,
to know that everyone's there doing a job.
Just do your thing.
Table reads that you brought up are something else,
where it is way too hot of an audience,
where it feels like they got bullied into laughing.
Yes.
Because it's like network people there,
so everyone's like, "Haha, that's the joke that I wrote.
"Everyone likes that."
Have you ever bombed a table read?
I have not, but I have been involved in table reads
where someone gets cocky and thinks,
"Oh, this is just a table read,
"so I don't need to perform at my top abilities here.
"I can save it," or something, I don't know.
Yeah.
And they get fired.
You can get fired at any time.
And so it's like every time
they want to hear you say a line,
you better say it the money way to say it.
Yes.
You better have all the coffee
or whatever drugs making you funny.
Do that because yeah,
because it's the second to last audition.
Yes.
And I always cringe
when actors will post the deadline article
in "The Hollywood Reporter" of like, "Booked it!"
And it's like, you are so close to getting...
You could be gone.
(laughing) Yes.
You could be gone tomorrow,
and everyone's going to be asking, "What happened to that?"
Right, right.
"I didn't see you on CW's "The Arrow.""
That's the same reason
that they recommend that you don't tell people
that you're going to have a baby
until the end of the first trimester.
Yes.
Because you might not be having a baby.
It's just because odds are-
Equally sad things, losing a human being and a pilot.
(laughing)
It's right up there together.
In my mind, it's the same.
There is a table read pressure on you now
because essentially every night on "The Conan Show,"
you are the only audience member.
Yeah.
Besides the crew, you're really the only one in the seats.
What is that like?
I mean, does it feel like you're Mark Ruffalo's character
in "Shutter Island,"
where you're just helping this man process that
you have a TV show,
(laughing)
Whatever trauma you can process.
I mean, no, honestly, this has just been so
from starting in quarantine
for months and months and months,
and then doing the show from home,
and it being completely strange,
and getting an email, and then shooting a bit myself,
getting my own props.
And I always did it immediately when I got the email
because I had nothing else to do.
Yeah.
And I'd do the bit and send it off,
and then I'd sit there and wait for the next email
where somebody thought of a bit for me to do.
So coming here was like, "Oh, God, I get out of the house."
Honestly, one of the best things about doing this
is that you're around funny people
and that you get to spend lots of time with funny people.
And in fact, in your personal life
you can spend all so much of your day with funny people
and then you go home and you're used up all your funny
and the people in your house are like,
"Hey, where's the funny guy?"
And you're like, "Oh, man, I'm tired of being funny.
(laughing) "Leave me alone."
Yeah, it is hard to talk to...
People that are not in comedy are the same way.
Yeah.
'Cause I think people in comedy
say the meanest things to each other.
Absolutely.
The way that we get to be funny around here is mostly mean.
And I mean, it's the kind of mean
that comes from a group of people that are safe,
that feel safe with each other.
So you can really (laughing) you can be a jerk.
And it can be so much fun, and there's such funny stuff,
and it's all stuff
that could never be on television just because-
It is all cancelable material.
Yes, it's all either awful, awful, dark things
or it's about somebody that could sue.
I mean, it's just-
Yeah.
It's truly one of my favorite things
about doing this for a living.
And it's people that are paid to be funny.
They're funny. (laughing)
Yeah, which makes the roasting hurt extra hard.
Yeah.
They've trained at this, they've been rewarded for it.
Even from when you're a baby, comedy baby,
you are making fun of each other.
Yeah.
You are teasing each other.
I mean, at times it can be a bit much,
and it can be more of a young person's game
because you just get older and you're like,
"There's enough negativity in the world." (laughing)
You've also kept up with the podcasts.
You've had something to do in quarantine
that you're still able to do.
[Andy] Yeah, yeah.
I have a podcast.
What's that been like, focusing on that?
It's been nice and it definitely, in the early days,
was sometimes the only conversation
that I would have with another human being face-to-face,
even if it's virtually face-to-face.
I mean, I'm always talking to my kids
or texting with my kids,
but like I said, they were days where the podcast,
I'd record for two hours
just because I was happy to be talking to somebody.
And I do just talk to people
that I'm interested in talking to mostly.
So there's very little kind of drudgery kind of interviews.
It's usually fun.
It's somebody that I'm looking forward to talking to,
and I'm glad I had it to do.
Is it something you're looking forward to
in five years when this is all over?
Is it your life?
In five years? (laughing)
Oh, Moses, no.
Yeah, I mean, the way this is going, this is brutal.
This is all so freaking crazy and so unique
and so unlike anything
that we've ever been through before
that I can't even picture.
I think about what am I going to do
at the other side of this,
and I can't even picture it.
I've had deep existential moments of like, who am I?
And what do I do with my time?
And with my emotion and my actions.
Yeah, because other people,
the way they react to you and what you put out,
essentially inadvertently tells you who you are.
Yeah.
At least reinforces the ego or identity.
And it's very weird to not have that.
What do I do?
Yeah.
I thought I'd do more, I thought this would be different.
Yeah.
I mean, but it's like down to,
I guess I'll still work in show business,
but some days feels like, (laughing)
"Am I still going to work in show business?"
And quite frankly, with this show ending in June,
the TBS show ending in June,
and not really knowing what form the new show will take,
it's weird.
It's exciting in many ways to have that kind of
sort of change point and those kind of moments of change.
And I've been through them,
can be great and they're scary,
but they can be really fun and good.
But I don't have the notion of planning a vacation,
to make sure that you can get your reservations.
I'm not even bothering with anything like that.
Just because who knows?
Yeah.
I'm just sitting here waiting for it to end,
and then I'll see where my life goes.
That's what I've seen.
Especially with the Comic Con shows.
I didn't know how active you were
in each of the sketches and segments.
I'm like, no, let's just find it out for this.
I think that's a lot of people don't see that work.
Conan relies on me
because he trusts my taste and my judgment.
So a lot of the time I just get the, "Is that good?"
"Yeah," or, "No," or, like I said before,
"It needs a new ending," or
"It needs this joke," or "Cut that part."
You need somebody to turn to and go,
"Tell me I'm not wrong."
And if you do it right,
you'll get somebody who will tell you when you're wrong,
which is a truly beautiful thing about Conan O'Brien
is that he's willing to be wrong.
He's willing to be differed with.
I mean, to a certain extent.
I can't say much.
He may be here.
(laughing) He does scream at you after.
Yeah, you could be doing it long enough
and still collaborate with people
and still know that, Absolutely.
"Hey, yeah, I don't know the best the room."
Because I'll come up with stuff
that I think is hilarious,
and then I find out it's not.
Comedy is not a poem.
It's a democracy.
You'll find out that thing you thought
was really hilarious is not that great.
And you go, "Oh, okay."
Yes, hence the need for live audiences.
Yeah, yeah.
[Moses] To make the meritocracy work.
Yeah.
But this is always really great.
It's really helpful to always talk to you.
Oh, thank you.
Get your input on things.
It's a good perspective.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for taking the time to do this.
We really appreciate it.
No problem.
And I'll see you around campus.
Yeah.
We'll be around.
We know where you are.
You're in the courtyard.
That's right.
Andy Richter, everyone.
All right, thank you, Moses.
Thank you so much.