The Daily Beast Podcast - Conan Sidekick Andy Richter Is Totally Team Cancel Culture

Episode Date: November 13, 2022

Actor and comedian Andy Richter’s take on cancel culture can be summed up in three words: Bring it on. On this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, he tells host Andy Levy why “it’s about time” cancel culture is a thing and shares experiences of seeing it play out in real life. The two Andys also discuss why Richter didn’t vote for Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders, if he regrets that decision now, and why he’s O.K. being referred to as Conan O’Brien’s “sidekick.” Plus! His affection for the Twitter porn bots that spam his account. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennett, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal,

and we thank you so much for being here. Joining me today is someone who's been begging me to have him on ever since I took over the New Abnormal, and I just couldn't put him off any longer. You may know him as the longtime real talent behind everything Conan O'Brien's ever done. You may know him as Kenny in the cult classic movie Cabin Boy. You may know him as the star of the late lamented sitcom Andy Richter controls the universe.

You may know him as the host of the podcast the three questions with Andy Richter. You may not know him at all, but by now you've probably figured out that his name is Andy Richter. Andy, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Arnie. That actually works because otherwise I'm going to be confused. I know, I know. The Zoom screen is fun.

Andy talking to Andy. So I want to start. You're not necessarily super political. I mean, you dip into it. But I need to ask you about a rumor going around that I just started that you were actually at the Capitol on January 6th. Is that true? I was. I was selling those hot dogs that are wrapped in bacon. Oh, those are so good. Oh, they're really good. My ex-wife used to call them danger dogs. I don't know if she coined that or not, but it's an excellent name for them. Okay, so you deny

breaking into the Capitol building. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anyone who knows me knows that that's far too much effort and labor. Good Lord. Have you ever been in those buildings? They're dull. Who's going to smash down doors to basically walk around a high school library. A fancy one, but still. Yeah, it is pretty fancy. It is fancy. It's got all those columns. So this leads me to my next question. A few days ago, I guess it was October 28th. I saw one of those this day in history things from the Associated Press, and it had your birthday, and it also had Mussolini takes power. Wow, I never knew that. That's fantastic. Well, it got me thinking. Do you still deny that there's a connection there? Uh-uh. Nope, I do not. Okay, so this you don't deny. I don't deny at all. Yeah, I know. My parents were big fascistee, and so they planned the pregnancy of me to coincide with

Ilducci's rise. And in fact, my mom had to drink four jars of Maranara sauce to induce labor. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Sort of a homemade C-section. Yes, exactly. Common Italian. Italian home wisdom. We're going to get letters. Okay. In all seriousness, you are, as I said, you're pretty well. entrenched on the left side of things. Some of my other guests, Paul Tompkins, Tim Heidecker, they have sort of aligned themselves with the Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA. Do you do the same? Are you more comfortable than the Democratic Party? Are you kind of a none of the above, but just I am what I am? Well, the idea of Democratic socialism is lovely, and it's what I am. But I don't necessarily think that what I hold in my head as the ideal is going to be

what gets things done in the real world. So I am of the opinion that it's better to remain a Democrat and make the Democrats more socialist as much as one can. And there are those who will scream, how naive! But it's a broken, fucked up contraption. And it's so to be like, well, I'm going to rise above it, it just doesn't make sense to me. But I'm very much a kind of a Midwestern pragmatist. and I don't think protest votes a good idea. I'm very sympathetic with the notion that it's all fucked up and that we need to find a different way. I'm maybe I'm just too old to believe that that's possible. Okay, so the pull quote from this is Andy Richter, too much of a coward to join the DSA.

Okay, got it. Too old. Right. No. Well, and also, quite frankly, there's a lot of stuff that I read about the DSA that doesn't exactly bode well for being involved with them. Such as? No, Google. Google it.

People will get mad at me because I am like, well, people get mad at you if you say, like, well, I'm more of a liberal than a leftist. I'm pretty left, but I would say, I'm probably more of a liberal than a leftist. Now, that changes the more fucked up the world gets. I'm way more left than I was six or seven years ago. Because before, again, there was all this kind of pragmatic stuff. Like, say, for instance, like Bernie Sanders' plans for how he, was going to pay for all the programs that he was going to do, it didn't really add up for me and for a lot of

people. And then after Trump one, I went, well, who fucking cares if anything adds up? Right. Who gives a shit? So his math didn't work. What the fuck? I mean, and I'm not saying that, I love Bernie Sanders. I never voted for him for president, but I do love him. And I know people, they get annoyed by that, too. But I do think, like, I was silly to worry about that when I was deciding between Democrat candidates. It's like, who cares if Bernie's not? numbers work. Just the point is to get in there. That's in a nutshell, too, part of the problem. Right. Look, you've kind of, that's close to a mirror of what's happened to me too, so I'd fully get it. What do you make of obviously the big news online right now is Elon Musk taking over Twitter?

Do you see yourself being long for that platform? Because you've built up a nice following on there. You're a pretty popular on there, despite rarely saying anything interesting or funny, you've just sort of, you've parlayed, your fame into a lot of followers. I like to think I am Twitter's number one stop for unhelpful hints. I don't know. I mean, I like Twitter.

I think Twitter's fun and I've made a lot of friends on Twitter. You, for instance, and there's a group of people that I talk to every day. And I really enjoy cracking jokes with them, teasing each other, just doing friend stuff. And they're all on this thing called Twitter. And that silly,

nonsense box has enriched my life for many years and given me lots of information, lots of personal growth for fuck's sake, and lots and lots of good times with great people that I wouldn't know otherwise. And yeah, it's a bunch of fucking assholes on it. There's a learning curve where you have to learn how to asshole proof your experience. Quite frankly, some of it's a little bit depressing. Like, I used to talk a lot about a topic that's very important to me, which is common sense gun control. I had to stop, and you could figure out why. I wouldn't say, like, somebody's like, I'm coming to your house, but there were people that let me know that they knew my address. And lots of, like, oh, like cartoon depictions of my bullet riddled body. And I'm a

comedian. Like, I kind of was like, this part of me that was like, I don't, fuck them. How dare, and then there was another part of me, it's like, what are you doing? Like, there's, There's other people to tell people that there should be less guns in less places. Maybe take it back a notch and just, that's a bit of a bummer, but well, whatever. I spent a good amount of time shooting down the really, really flimsy anti-gun control arguments that they all get from Dum Dum HQ and spit them out like a mimograph machine. And they're all really easy to poke holes in. And I did that for a while.

And I did it kind of publicly and kind of like there were a couple times where I would have kind of a back and forth with a fairly decent size conservative something or other. And it always is interesting to me because there was a lot of people like, huh, I never heard that. Huh. I never knew that. I never knew like basically how slanted the entire gun landscape is now by the NRA and the Republicans and money and heller and all of it. So it was fun to see that. But like I say, knowing that somebody that probably agreed with a guy that took a gun to the fucking pizza place because he thought they were eating babies, no one that he probably agrees with that guy and he knows my address, I can take the foot off the accelerator. Yeah, definitely the theme of this interview is definitely your cowardice.

I think we're at this point. Yeah, I'm a big chicken. It does get really ugly on there. And of course, we are two cis straight white dudes saying this. and it's unfathomably worse for people who don't look like us. Unbelievably worse. I was able to just stop. I just stopped talking about something.

And then I go right back into being very, very safe and very kind of mostly unassailable until this fucking thing comes out. But there's other people that they're just open to, I mean, well, the life of a fucking woman is just, most men should just have to be a woman for just like a month. Because I've always said, if I couldn't walk out to my. car at night by myself, like without thought and with just kind of, like, I would be furious all the time. If I made, whatever it is, 70 cents on the dollar compared to, I don't know, if right-hander left-handed's made a dollar and right-handed's made 70 cents, I'd be furious as a right-hander.

That is how it should be, though. It would save a lot of money because there's less lefties. Andy, one thing I've noticed that almost every time I interact with you on Twitter, is I then get, for literally months, I get tons of responses from porn bots. And I'm not sure whether to be mad at you about this or thank you, but it is, it happens with almost nobody else, but for some reason, I don't know what you subscribe to and no judgment is a safe space, a judgment free zone. But I, it is unbelievable how many porn bots I get saying things like, are you lonely too?

And it's a... I bored how you. Exactly. Exactly. What we call that is being under attack from Andy's army. Oh, okay. That's right. And they're not only, they're porn bots, yes, but they're literal robots.

They're literal sexy, Latvian girl robots that are poised for domination. And I don't mean sexual. I have noticed that, too. And that's been happening a lot. lately. I just think it's so funny, first of all, that anybody is on Twitter for porn. Like, like, it's just like, I don't know, like going to AutoZone for antihistamine. Like, there's so many other places to consume porn in a more, just like a nicer way, like just less clicking and bullshit. But no, there's entire porn lives. Name three. I don't know anybody. I

I don't know anybody's names. I just like, I just click through. Okay. Like there'll be like mention of a porn star and I'll just be like, oh, here, let's check that out. I don't want to look at the videos. Or it's usually if it's somebody, frequently it's marketing at work. It's like when one of those kind of body things comes up and it looks like, well, well,

I like to see where that sock went to and then I click on it. Let's see. So you can put porn addicted coward now. Yes, exactly. I'm learning so much. So I want to ask you one more sort of serious-ish question and then get to the fun stuff. There's something I've been sort of doing with all my Sunday guests or most of them. And by that I mean basically three, counting you.

And I'm asking them sort of the same question. And it kind of struck me that if I do this enough times, I can maybe get an entire sort of special episode out of it where I can take a day off and present or have it be like a new abnormal special. Because you're so busy. Yes, exactly. You're so busy. Exactly. So the question is, what do you think? of when you hear the phrase cancel culture? What comes to your mind?

Mostly what I feel about it is it's about time. It's about time we stop saying lots of the things that we say. And it's about time that we stopped not caring about how things that we say that we don't have to say. Like words that we don't have to use. Like the word for little people, the M word. Like that was just a comedy staple, just spilling out of everybody's mouth. And I never, I never thought about it. And there was a point in which, and I mean, I was already, like, I had been on TV for years and I found out, oh, that word's really hurtful to a lot of people and makes them feel like shit. Oh, well, that's easy enough. I'm not going to say that word anymore. That's the nice welcome Matt front door into it. It gets all fucked up because people, it's mostly fucked up on the

side of the people that are doing bad things. For me, like, if I look at it mainly in comedy, And because the way that people present it to me all the time is my fiance and her daughter, we were at a ballet class, like for her two and a half year old. And I was sitting outside the ballet studio. And some numb nuts creases my ear for 20 minutes and I'm too fucking Midwestern to just be rude. So I have little techniques to sort of end the conversation like a glance at the phone or a glance at the watch or like go over and look into the window of the dance studio as he follows me and keeps talking.

But he kept going. He had a lot of time in his hands. But one of his things was, don't you just think it's impossible to do comedy anymore? What with this cancel culture? And it's just like, no, no, not if you're not fucking lazy. If you're lazy, maybe. But then don't do this.

Do something else. And that's what I feel about it. Like, can you make cases where the punishment was larger than the crime in some cases? Yes. But in what area of punishment does that not happen? And for the most part, people that have gotten in trouble deserve to get in trouble. And the whole point of it is five years ago, they wouldn't have gotten in trouble. So this is good.

The world is changing for the better. We can't do Amos and Andy anymore. That's a really good thing. And at the time, there were people who were complaining about, well, it's just funny. Isn't comedy supposed to be about what everyone's thinking? No, comedy's supposed to be funny. And if it starts to be gross and ugly, then it's not fucking funny anymore, unless you're gross and ugly. So a lot of this was Twitter.

I received a real education in terms of ways in which being funny publicly, it leaned it up. It was like there was loose, goosey areas where I could kind of dabble in sort of like make a joke that's kind of ablest. Find out I shouldn't do that joke. And then I go, okay. For me, the best comedy, the best drama, it's when it threads the needle of the sort of strictures against it. Like, you're telling a story. Like, there's disbelief. If you can get around disbelief, you've really accomplished something.

Because most shitty stories, you go, don't buy it, don't buy it, don't buy it. And with comedy, if you can still be funny with all of these supposed weights tied to you, like common decency and concern for others. Right. If you can do that, that's really great. You're really, you're swinging at a high batting average and you're doing work that you should aspire to yourself and that other people should aspire to also. Yeah. And it really burns me up like I saw Musk tweeted a few days ago. He used to me like, comedy is now legal again on Twitter or something like that.

And then I saw Dane Cook replied and he's like, is it okay to be funny on here again? And I was like, what couldn't you say that you think you can say now that you think, is funny. Like, give me an example. Like, do you want to just type the N-word over and over again? Is that funny to you? Like, I don't know what these, like, Dane Cook is a professional comedian. You're telling me he couldn't be funny on Twitter until Elon Musk bought the stupid site. I'm struck by this all the time. Put you in a situation where you have to call out, like, just the dumbest shit. Like the fact that, like, can we be funny on Twitter again? That's so fucking stupid. Like, if somebody said that in your office, you would just ignore them. Just go, shut up. Gary, zip it. Just everyone would be

quiet and someone who would change the subject and you'd move on. But no, you've got to fucking answer whether or not this absurd notion that somehow comedy is being crippled by left-wing wokeism. Fuck you. Just be funny, motherfucker. No funny people are saying this. I mean, there's a couple. There's a couple people, like Dave Chappelle is kind of stuck on an issue that keeps him out of the good graces of most people in comedy. And he seems to be stuck on it. He's a really, really funny guy, though. He is chosen to dig in his heels about this issue. That's kind of a rarity.

I haven't heard anything. And Louis C.K., I worked with him on Conan. He was a friend of mine. But I haven't heard anything he's done in a while. But he's a genius. He's a fucking genius. He did some bad stuff. And I call him a genius, but I haven't listened to anything he's done because, I mean, well, A, I don't listen to a lot of things. I just, my attention span so bad. I put on people that I love, like, they're special. Like, they got an hour forget it.

It's got to be a half hour, half hour tops. And sometimes like minute 20 of the half hour, I'm like, let's wrap it up, okay? I really love you. I think you're brilliant. But come on. That's where TikTok is great. Yeah. Well, all of these. all of these attention span crushers have just ruined me. Just ruined me. Me too. I tried to show my kids a number of years ago like SCTV. Like kids, you gotta see this show.

It's the fucking funniest. I could not believe how long everything takes on STTV. A commercial parody that lasts four minutes. There was a time when I thought that was beautifully paste

and worth every second. And now I'm just like, Get to it, get to it, get to it. This has been another episode of getting old with Andy and Anne. I know, I know. Yeah, but anyway, so cancel culture. It'll calm down and it'll just be like, it'll become the period of necessary growth that American society needed to undergo.

Very well spoken. Thank you. We'll edit that out. I'm smart. I want to get to more of your personal and professional life. Going back, you attended the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champagne. For two years. Well, as you know, the computer, Hal became operational at the coordinated science lab there in the 90s. I think that was after your time. But did you know Dr. Chandra or any of the people involved with that? No, no, but Hal, I mean, because obviously there's a lot of different howls. And one of the early howls I can't remember which worked at the bowling alley in the student union, spraying shoes and making change and tried to kill people virtually every night. I'm just trying to. a picture how. No, I can't. I absolutely can't. I think you made that up. I don't believe it's

sure. Yeah, I could describe it, but I feel it's best for my improvised comedy if we move on. Yes, I think that's probably best. All right, so let's talk about the thing that you're most famous for. And of course, I mean playing Kenny in the 1994 movie, Calvin Boy. Oh, boy, I was afraid it was going to be something that was not good. But no, I'm happy with that. No, I am kidding, of course, but I cannot emphasize enough how wildly underrated that movie is and everyone should see it and love it. And it's just one of the great joys of life is watching that movie. But obviously, I'm talking about your long history as Conan O'Brien's sidekick, which leads you to my first question. Do you mind the word sidekick? Not at all. Not at all because what else are you going to call it? Like, co-host isn't

apt because it's not an equal position and it shouldn't be an equal position. And I never wanted it to be an equal position. I don't know what else you'd call it. I mean, in the beginning, I wasn't the announcer. As it went on, you could call me the announcer and then just kind of, I could have been like, yeah, I'm the announcer. And I also do comedy and wisecrack through the interviews. So no, I don't have any problem with it whatsoever. And in fact, I really, I mean, as much as I am in possession of a fairly strong ego, ergo, me working in this business, I'm really okay with being second or less. I'm really okay. with being second or less. I mean, the higher, the closer to second, the better,

but I don't need to be number one. And I've been number one on some shows because I was curious about what that would be like. And in just terms of like career growth after working with Conan and still wanting to do other things and go out and try other things, that was like the next step would be to get in a sitcom and be, I didn't intend to,

but have my freaking name in the title. And it was nice. liked the main thing I liked about being, well, at least two of the shows, was just kind of being able to have a real hand in producing the show, which is what I always had on Conan. Like if I wanted something to be a certain way, I could really, most of the time, make it happen. If there was a good reason to dissuade me from wanting to do it that way, I can be open to it and go, oh, all right, I can see why it shouldn't be that way. I'd loved making the TV shows when I was number one on the call sheet.

But like I say, the first and the third, the middle one, quintuplets. I was just an actor on. It was on Fox. I was the father of five teenagers, which was hilarious because the previous pilot year, I wasn't old enough to have teenage kids. And the next year, I was on a show where I had five of them. So there was one point early in that process where we were shooting, but it wasn't an audience day.

And the writers were sort of huddled up in a corner of the studio. And I went over to just kind of hang out and listen to what the pitches were. And it came to a screeching halt. And the guy that ran the show turned to me and said, like, is there something we can help you with? I said, yeah, just, and he's like, um, yeah, what can you? And I just, all right, fuck you, man. And then like four episodes later, he's asking me for ideas. Right.

That was like, okay, I'm going to show up. I'm going to say the line. And if the line's fucking blow, I'm going to push real hard to change him. But, you know, I'm not going to worry about anything else, basically. Right. The shows that I got to have a hand in, that's all a product. of me doing this for a while, but also largely because Conan O'Brien trusted me enough to let me have a real say in the personality and the direction of late night with Conan O'Brien,

the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien and Conan. And I think it's fair to say that ultimately he was wrong to do so. Well, is he still on the air? I don't think so. He is not, exactly. Yeah. It was like a 30-year nosedive. Yeah.

How long did you last? the Tonight Show? What was it? Seven months, I think. Sixteen days, something like that? Seven months, I think. Unfortunately, I'm running out of time, which sucks because I have so much more to ask you. But I do want to ask you about your podcast, the three questions with Andy Richter, because honestly, this sounds like the laziest host shit ever. Like, have people on and ask them the same three questions every week? This is a grift. This is a straight up grift, isn't it? Yeah. No, it's a gimmick to get people to talk about themselves while I masturbate. Okay.

Yes. Hots out of the bag. At first I was going to be hurt that you've never invited me on, but now I'm really hurt that you've never invited me on. You don't do it for me. You don't do it for me. Am I too Jewish? No.

Well, it's just the voice. Oh, okay. Fair enough. As people say it about me, but I mean, I sound great to me. Which is actually the biggest fucking lie. I cannot. That's the other thing of just like doing what I do for a living and now especially podcasting like hearing my own voice just makes my skin crawl to this day

to this day yeah i have so much trouble listening to these podcasts because as soon as i hear myself speak i'm like nope yeah i've always like if i'm watching something that i'm in that i need to have some sort of objective critical view of i have to watch it a couple three times at least because at least the first one for sure is just like oh look at you you big fucking pile of pudding oh Don't do that. Self-loathing. I have to, like, blow it out of the system, like a backfiring car until the actual critical engine can run smoothly. Right.

What else are you doing these days besides the podcast? I'm developing an animated show for Warner. It's all shit that doesn't. You can't, like, that could be something or nothing. Right. So it's like I'm a developing an animated show for Warner Brothers. But it's a real pitch now. It's not.

I wouldn't tell you about, because I got other shit that's just like, I've talked to someone about it. But I have people actually willing to sign a paper that says, let's make this. Animated show for Warner Brothers that I'm doing with a very funny writer named Eric Minus Kaplan, who was a writer on Andy Richter controls the universe. And I have a game show that I came up with that I'm developing with a production company. I pitched that around. Somebody's like, yep, let's take that out. And then I have about three or four TV ideas that I'm just trying to put irons into fires.

And I'm doing guest spots and stuff, game show stuff. I mean, I get to do game show stuff, which is really, really fun. It's one of the things that when they talk about like satisfying a childhood ambition or a dream, like for me, it's the fact that I was on a talk show and got to do the animal segments. Like every time I was ever doing an animal segment, I was not Andy Richter broadcast professional. I was Andy gets to play with animals. The other one is cartoon voices and the third one is game shows. I cannot believe that I get to do that.

stuff for living. Like I still, it's silly to me that I'm now like in the game show community. Right. It's endlessly delightful to me. Well, I unfortunately have to let you go because I'm out of time, but I do just want to say that as someone who has sort of been also like a sidekick type person for a while now, you were always sort of my idol is a very strong word, but it's not. I can understand that. It's not wrong. I always loved you on Conan. I always, I hated that little period when you were gone on Conan. And I remember just being so excited when you came back. And it has been an absolute thrill to talk to you here today. Thanks so much, Andy. Oh, thank you, Andy. I really appreciate that. Thank you. It's been fun getting to know you all these years. But continuing to know you

isn't worth $8. No. Yes. I'm with you on that. I'll figure out your phone number and I'll just text you if we leave Twitter. Okay. All right. Thanks, Andy. Thank you, Andy. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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