The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jonathan Groff

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

“Late Night with Conan O’Brien” head writer and showrunner of “Andy Barker, P.I.,” Jonathan Groff joins Andy Richter to discuss their many collaborations, Andy’s home-runs at Yankee Stadium, their first interaction (before Jonathan even worked on “Late Night!”), what being a good head writer means, how he became one of Disney’s go-to sitcom consultants, and much more. Do you want to talk to Andy live on SiriusXM’s Conan O’Brien Radio? Tell us your favorite dinner party story (about anything!) or ask a question - leave a voicemail at 855-266-2604 or fill out our Google Form at BIT.LY/CALLANDYRICHTER. Listen to "The Andy Richter Call-In Show" every Wednesday at 1pm Pacific on SiriusXM's Conan O'Brien Channel. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the three questions. I'm your host, Andy Richter, and today I'm talking to my friend Jonathan Groff. Not that Jonathan Groff, the other Jonathan Groff. This one is a writer, producer, director, and actor. He was the head writer at Late Night with Conan O'Brien and the showrunner for my show, Andy Barker, P.I. He also worked on sitcoms like Blackish, How I Met Your Mother, and happy endings. And he played Jerome Sinfeld in the Netflix series Black A.F. Here's my conversation with Jonathan Geroff. Okay, you were saying you know the exact date when you were out. I don't know the exact date, but I can pretty closely pinpoint it because your show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, premiered September. My show. Yep. 13th.

Late night with Conan O'Brien. I was pretty generous to let them call it his, you know, put his name on it. It was confusing because everybody knew it was late. It was weird, yeah. And I didn't get a desk. No. No. Well, they wanted to see more of you.

They wanted to see, as I always called it, belly and balls. Oh, God. Like the skinny guy gets the desk to hide behind. Yeah, exactly. And then, but the guy that's got everything compacting into dress slacks. Yeah, yeah. And also, we're talking, early 90s, there were some, you know, know, like sport coats and slacks, outfits that probably didn't help?

No, not at all. But beautiful. Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, now it's my trademark. Yeah. Belly and balls. That would be a great duo. Here they are, belly and balls.

I'm belly. I'm balls. Well, wait, now, when was it, do you think? I could think, I would say it was probably fall of 19, I might have met you in passing because I went to see the show as a fan or as a friend of some of the writers because I knew some of them from stand-up world. So I might have set a load to you. But actually, it was really, my memory of it was in the waiting room at ICM voiceover department

because we were both agents. I had just gotten signed to do voiceovers through ICM by Stephen Rcieri and Tim Roscoe. And that was helping keeping me afloat before I started writing a lot. And you were super nice. And I was like, oh, good. And I was like, oh, I have friends work at the show. And you're like, okay, good. I remember when I submitted my packet, I didn't try to, like, angle at all, but I was like, I had to have a packet and I go, well, good look.

And then you worked very hard and actively to prevent it, me being hired there. I know this. And I'm calling you out. I did. Well, you know, I was like, I cannot have someone with a good voice. Someone with a marketable voice in here, you know. Yeah, that was voice. overs back then that was like pretty sweet that was pretty sweet good good deal yeah yeah well you had it you had a

voice that would book stuff anyway I feel because it's resonant and interesting and then also then you became shit out of me when I hear it but you know I I don't quite no honestly I don't I hate hearing my voice and it sounds like and I always love most people do who loves hearing that I guess they get it well there are those um but like I just always love that like whenever like I Conan will do it and other people will do it, like whenever they do an imitation of me. It's like, me, me, me, me, you know. I will bust one out during this conversation. I promise.

I already was thinking like, yeah, all right, but surprise me. I still, now I know it's coming, but I want to be surprised. Yeah, so, yeah, and that was, and when did you start working? I got hired in January of 1995, almost a year later. Yeah, yeah. I'd been working in television. I'd been a stand-up, working in television, and I was, I think I had submitted a monologue packet early on that it wasn't very good.

I don't even have the packet that I submitted to get on the show. And I remember, too, I was in San Francisco when the whole, because my ex-wife, who was then we were dating, she was in San Francisco doing a show and I had driven up there because I was in L.A. doing the movie Cabin Boy and I had driven up to... Wow, that was like three minutes before you got the cabin boy. That was...

Save it for when you do the imitation. I was a cabin boy. No, but I would drive up to hang out there when I wasn't working. Well, actually, I think it had ended by that point. And I was like in Los Angeles without many people that I knew, like, wondering what the fuck I'm going to do with myself. And I was in San Francisco.

Robert Smigel calls me and says, I'm doing this show with Conan, write up a packet. And I was like, wow, what am I going to do? And so my ex-wife was doing a show with Joey Salloway. And I borrowed paper from them. and it was kind of ecru. And it was like, I turned in my jokes, my joke pack. It was on like colored lady paper, you know. Ecru is so great.

Yeah, yeah. And it was, and I just was like, thank you note color. I know, I know. I thought I was like, I was just like, is this bad to turn it in on basically, you know, sort of tan paper, you know. That's really funny. And, but they, I got higher. I mean, they. It worked?

Yeah, yeah. So I got, Conan apparently had want, after meeting me, told Robert, I want to hire him. Oh, yeah. No, that's, I know that story. Yeah, yeah. I know some Andy Richter, in fact, yeah. But then I guess, sort of a meeting and he was like, I don't, I just want to work with that guy. Yeah, yeah.

That's cool. Yeah, no, we had, no, it was really fun. I mean, we hit it off just because we're the same stupid. Right. You know, as I've said many times. Right. So, yeah, I submitted, I submitted on my second submission and I knew more what, what, how to do. And I, plus, I had the benefit.

I think I submitted monologue jokes. And as I said, they weren't. very good. But I had the advantage that unlike a lot of people, I think, I now knew a little bit what the show was doing somewhat. So I was able to submit some bits. And I would say this later to people would say, what do I want to write for that show? What do I submit? I always say, do some bits, write up some bits that you think we could do or would do and then give us half a dozen that we should do, that are to push it a little bit. Right, right. And that's what I I think, tried to do.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, people, but, you know, people definitely, it always helps to know some people. So I was like, there were, there were people on staff that were of help. At that point, did getting a job as a right, I mean, were you just so happy to have the job? Or was there any sort of disappointment that it was going to derail your career as a performer? That's a great question. Thank you. I was not, I was not unhappy to,

put my performing as stand-up aside, which is basically what I did at that point. I think I've said this to you before, but I always feel like with stand-up, I was in the right, I was in the right house with comedy, but I think I was maybe knocking on the door of the wrong room. Because when I moved to New York, it was, I was funny, and I'd been working up in Boston for a long time, and it'd been on the road, and I'd done a few little TV things here and there, but I moved to New York, and it was like in 93 or 92, 93, and it was like, oh there's sarah silverman there's ray romano there's david there's dave chappelle there's david tell there's loy ck there's these people who are just killing it and a work ethic of almost maniacal set doing which i also didn't quite have the stomach for yeah um and i wasn't really established in the new york scene i got spots and stuff but i wasn't really not established so it was like time to try something else yeah i think i was much more soon as i started writing and writing for other people i was like oh that i'm good at that and i'm good at figuring out of voice and writing and you know worked for mark marron on a show called short attentions fan

theater um and uh on on comedy central and that was like good experience writing for a host doing a lot of episodes of it yeah over the course of a year writing in someone else's voice kind of you think or yeah yeah yeah like how would mark say this and he would let you know if it didn't make sense and he was he was great to work for and they let us do little comedy bits and on the show kind of mini sketch stuff so for no money yeah but it was good good training and so by the time I applied like now probably a year and a half after my first application to Conan. I think I was a good, it was a good application. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I, whenever, I mean, I know I saw you perform a couple times, but it was always in sort of what they were calling the alternative. Yes. A scene. Well, the thing I did a lot. And I kept doing once I was at Conn, I started doing it before.

And it was a lot of fun was this two-person thing with Todd Barry. Yeah. Who's a dear friend and super funny stand-up. and he and I had this thing called side, well, it didn't turn out, but we called a show. We built a kind of hour-long show called sidecarring, where it was me kind of being his straight-laced friend, kind of probing his weirdness, and then his weirdness. It was all kind of fun to talk about, then his weirdest sort of, I realize, is impacting my life. So it's like, you got, you bought, Todd, you bought a ring for my wife, you know, and you gave her a ring.

Yeah, man, I gave her a ring. What are you talking about? I'm like, but it's engraved, you know, inside with, you know, with Todd love you, whatever. Todd for, love you forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was fun. We took that to Aspen and everything. So I did do a little bit more performing.

Yeah. But not, not to the extent that I was. So to your original question, I was kind of relieved to go like, oh. And also like, I don't know if you felt this starting out at 30 Rock, but you kind of go like, I am working in this building. Absolutely. I can't believe it. It's a temple of capitalism, but also a temple of, you know, media and television and the heartbeat of television in the 50s and 40s and on Beyond and Saturday Night Live and Letterman and Conan now. It was amazing. And I mean, and I always, it's one of the things that I just am so grateful for that circumstance, like I got to work in that building for, I don't know, seven, eight years.

And also, too, when that's, when we started, too, Rockefeller Center was still kind of the functioning office building that it's, because now it's kind of a tourist place. Really? Do you feel that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because there was, there was like a real diner, a real New York diner in the lobby. And when you'd go, when you go downstairs into the underground, there's like kind of an underground area and there were shops and things. there was, there was like enough of a support thing to where you didn't have to leave the building. Right.

You know, there was like a pharmacy and shoe shop and a little grocery store, you know, like it was, it really felt like a little village inside there. Yeah. Whereas now it's kind of like chain stores. Oh, I haven't been in Vwana. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, just the murals and the sense and S&L being there. Yeah. It was incredible.

And going down, you know, like, like. Like the stairwell that we went down from nine to six and we could just go into the back door of S&L or, no, not six, nine to eight. Yeah, yeah. That studio's on eight. Yeah. And just to know that like when you read stories about people getting high, like Chevy Chase and John Belushi and those guys getting high in the stairwell, it's like this is the stairwell. Right. Like I'm right here.

I know. It was wonderful. where all the drugs were done. And we used to always shared a graphics department with the SNL people who were on like 16 on the other side of the studio, of the 8-H studio. So we would go down a flight of stairs, cut through 8-H, and go to meet with Anne or Kevin or Marty, our graphics people who were doing these, all that we did a ton of graphics stuff on this comedy bits on the show. And it was always like, oh, it's Thursday at 4. I'm going to go check on that graphics bit and maybe also see YouTube rehearsing as I cut through the studio. They couldn't stop me because I'm almost late night.

Right, right. I got an ID. I got a badge. Yeah. That was, everyone was always intensely aware of what band was on and when they were going to be on on Thursday. And you could just go and stand and watch. Yeah. Although, in fairness, Jim Pitt put some pretty good bands on Conan that we got to see.

It's like, oh, that's cool. We're not talking about that. Yeah, Jim Pitt was great at his job. Was he? Yeah, he actually was. Yeah. at Kimmel now, still doing it, still booking bands. Yeah.

So what was it like when you, like, what was your entry phase into coming into the show? At Conan, I had two roommates in my office, Ned Goldreier and Michael Stoynev, or my fellow writers. It was, I have to say, Marsh McCall was the head writer who hired me. Robert had just left his headwriter, Robert Smigel, and I have to give a real shout out to Marsh because I'd had jobs, I'd had one other job, which I won't mention, where you were instantly made to feel like, did we make a mistake in hiring you by lunch on the first day?

You felt that was the vibe you were getting. And some of that was maybe on me because it was kind of my first job in TV. It was Oprah, wasn't it? It was on Oprah, yeah. She really gave me, she brought in Stedman to give me that look, which she wasn't wrong. No, she. I was not right for the show. You were not a good fit. I was not right for that show. Yeah. So she, so I don't know, I, I, Marsh was really good because he was like,

we hired you, you're funny, get to work. And I remember like literally on the first day with Mike Sweeney who got hired on the same day going like, okay, that's an idea, go produce that. And I'm in editing. I never been in editing before with Chuck Dijan. Remember Chuck the editor? And, and like fixing this thing and getting a timing of this little piece of whatever. We've been stipulating piece of news footage or whatever to do some jokes on it. And it was like, oh, okay, this, there's a lot of work to do. Yeah. Because they're doing a lot of comedy. You guys had set the bar high in terms of just how much scripted comedy there was in every episode. And you did have to go sit with an editor and edit it. Yeah. And that was like that there are so many things that you just realize, I have the job to do this now. Yes. And I don't really know how to do this. I'm just going to have to like go. Totally. Start with that shot. And, you know, I mean, I don't.

into film school, so I kind of knew editing, but it still was like... Well, I remember the first remote, the first piece I went out and produced on my own was a remote that you and I went down to Florida to cover the scab baseball players. It was a baseball strike was starting in the spring of 94, and it was spring training, so it was like February, and we went down, and I brought back all this footage, and I remember going in with Mark Jankiloff and Kathy Babiak, who's the editor, and I didn't know. She was like, you know, we could do a dissolve on this. I know, a dissolve is when, you know,

the image is sort of one morphs out or one more similar. Yeah, yeah. They fade in and fade out in the same way. In the same time. I had no idea what that was. Wow. Because I hadn't even gone to film school. Yeah, yeah.

And so, like, having Kathy gently teach me like, let's try and dissolve on this moment on Andy's face. Now he's looking at the outfield of spring training complex. So it's like, oh, okay. So, yeah, it was like, and that was actually, I think, a great S&L tradition of the writers being producers of their pieces. I think that kind of came from from decades of SNL stuff. Yes.

And yeah, and also too, it just makes sense. Yeah. It just makes sense to not sort of hand off because there are, I think that, like I think us going out as writers into the field to shoot, say a comedy bit, you know, like go to the cemetery and shoot this comedy bit in the cemetery. I think there's supposed to be a deep. AGA person that goes out and supervises that shoe. No, no, I mean, there's no late night anymore, so it doesn't matter.

But I, you know, the notion of that, to have that, to have thought of like a sketch, and it's also, it's a sketch. Yeah. It's only going to be four minutes, tops. Like, let me just say what I, you know, rather than having this sort of interlocketer in the middle of it. Yeah, and there was, it was, and remotes, that was for me, too. I know they don't teach you how to do remote

no like they don't teach you how to like go to the scab baseball thing and make seven minutes of comedy I know I remember a few remotes I did with you and I think if there's a theme it was let's go to the thing and not do the thing that we're supposed to do

yeah yeah because we did it although it was fun we were we somehow I got I think through publicity or whatever decided go cover the Pocahontas premiere of the big animated Pocahontas in Central Park And Central Park. And we go to that, because I'll tell the, so we go to that and we, we end up like, it was a mob scene and we asked some questions. And then because it was a movie about an Indian woman, right? Yeah, yeah. A native. A native. But at the time, at the time, maybe you said Indian. Yeah, yeah. We went and got Indian food at a restaurant overlooking Central Park. So stupid. So stupid. And had just made it entirely different. But on the baseball one, you were like, you were kind of like, these guys are kind of. assholes. Like, a lot of them were really aggro. They were like, they were like minor league players who

were crossing a picket line to maybe try to hook on. Right. Which was a little bit, you know, gamey and unsavory. Well, and also the context was, we're talking to scabs. Exactly. You know, it's a bit of hostility to our thesis. Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, somehow we ended up going, let's do, let's look at some other sites around, um, around Florida. And somebody, uh, had picked up like a brochure for butterfly world. And so we shot you looking at butterfly world and you're like talking to one of these scabs and you're dreaming of butterfly world and like butterflies in a thought bubble around your head. So we closed the piece with your kind of grumpy.

Exactly. It kind of grumpy talking to these baseball players and then finally happy Andy as butterflies land on you. There's an indoor butterfly enclosure. And it was like, I like that theme kind of. Yeah, yeah. Let's not really do what we're supposed to do. Right, right. were you there for um did you go with me to the vagus one where we got snowed in it was like

yeah because we went because it's the electronic show but what appealed to me was it like it's the biggest the c s the consumer electronics show which is the biggest sort of gadget right you know and at the time it's videotapes you know and like but so the the sort of dirty secret is the biggest part of the home video market is porn. Oh, yeah. I remember that. So the AVN, the adult video news has their awards, their Oscars, and there's a, in like a shittier casino next to the casino that the big nice one is. There's a porn convention. And so we went to the porn convention. And that one was like, you know, there was plenty in that to do. But there was a thing where we, as we're driving

from the airport, see a billboard for fire a machine gun. Yeah, and so we just, like, there was a point when we're like, you know, like when we see it, we're just like, we got to go fire a machine gun, you know, 100%. In the middle, just to be like, you know, like after lunch, let's go fire the machine gun and then we'll come back and look at the dildos, you know. I remember that remote. It was fun. Yeah. It was Tommy Blachow. Is it Tommy?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we got snowed in. We were stuck there for like, like, snowed in coming back in New York. Yeah, New York. Like, that was, that was, I just remember sitting in the line. of the MGM Grand seeing on the cover of the New York Times, a person in daylight, cross-country skiing in a deserted time square. Oh my God. Yeah. It was a really big list. Did you miss shows? Or was it on a week off? I don't remember exactly. I don't think I did. I think it was on a week off.

Yeah. And then, and it's interesting to me, I didn't, I guess I had known, but I didn't realize that you and Mike Sweeney were hired on the same day because then you both went on to be head-run. Because Marsh, his tenure there was not very long. I think he had his eye on, he's from California and he had his eye on kind of trading up. And I think his girlfriend at the time was living out here in L.A. And he wanted to get back to L.A. So he was like, yeah, I started in January of 95 and then I took over his head writer in September. It was only like nine months.

And then Sweeney, I did it for almost five years. And then Sweeney put the record out of reach, did it for many years after me. So, yeah, but we'd start on the same day, yeah. I remember we both, we were both actually working at HBO Downtown, which is the production company that made short attention, short attention band theater that show I was doing with Mark Marion, and he was working on a show with Laura Kightlinger writing stuff for her that she hosted. And we both had applications in to Conan, and he was doing the warm-up for Conan by that point already.

So everybody kind of knew him, and I was like, oh, he's going to get this job. And then I got the call, and I think I came in the next day, and I was like, so I got a call us and it was like we both got the job oh that's good yeah yeah yeah didn't feel like we were didn't have to hate each other exactly yeah yeah well how did you feel about that like going from and nine months in all of a sudden you're going to be because you are a response because there is a big job it's a hard job yeah there is the thing of every day there's you know there's however many acts there were six acts I think yeah and at least two of them you got to be responsible for filling them

up. And so that's like 15 to 20 minutes of content that you had to put on. Big desk piece at the top of the show and you guys sat down at the desk and that was a lot of written stuff. And then sometimes a top of Act 2, which was after they came back from the first commercial, you guys would do something. And then a big Act 3, that was often like the big sketchy piece, some of the favorite act three or Act 4 pieces. Yeah, yeah. Oh, they were all, those were always our favorite. Yeah, they were super fine. So we're sort of deeper into the show. Exactly. But that's, you know, it's like SNL. It's like. Exactly.

The ones that are on in the last half hour are always the bit, you know, the funniest one. Exactly. One of the things we got good at, I think, when we were, in the time that I was there, was taking the energy of the weirdness of the act four pieces and then just packaging that into a quote unquote desk piece. And we would do like late night characters. And instead of like writing a full sketch for the middle of the show, which sometimes Conan was like, I don't want to necessarily do that. We would just put like the essence of what was funny and introduced like a weird character. And here's six new characters for fall of 96 or whatever. And that was fun.

And it was a weird costume thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My favorite always was, it was just like whenever, and we, and like you say, we did do a good job of like just basically finding a, would seem like a legitimate thing, but as a bucket for just weirdness. And there were different ones like that. And my favorite one was satellite TV. 100%. That was a great one. And it was the premise was so, because there was in that building, if in every, everywhere there was a TV, you were looking at satellite feeds from all over the place.

Like I just remember like one day in my dressing room watching Maria Shriver do her show, which was just the tops and bottoms to some. news magazine show and just and after everyone like checking her teeth for lipstick and that you know and it was right and it and it was it also was like i mean i like maria shriver but it was like this is her show it was done her work her week's work was done in about 10 minutes that's the dream yeah yeah yeah it was like coming up next a small town reels from a tragedy and now finds hope okay that's great now on to the next day you know or whatever um i had one job like that i had one job like that on the back to the voiceover thing i walked in i'd booked this job i walked in and said uh chef boy r d to a kid it's everything and they're like say that two more times did it done that was it and i made like

$13,000 or something i was like what yeah yeah yeah those bits were great the sort of big refillable. The other one like that that was there was existed before I got there. And so did satellite channels. But we really, I will say that in my tenure as head writer, we really leaned into satellite channels for exactly that reason because you can kind of do anything. Yeah, yeah. You know, it could be the

the barfing Elmo channel or whatever. And it's just a puppet of Elmo vomiting, vomiting Kermit channel. Yeah, yeah. Or Lincoln Money Shot. Lincoln Money Shot. Which was just Mike Sweeney as Lincoln having orgasms. Tight on his face. Just a tight slow

orgasms, yeah, exactly. Or one that Greg Cohen did called Max on Max. Oh, yeah. Which was Max Weinberg, who Max would, when Max, there would be bits where he'd have to have his shirt off and he would go to the gym and pump up before that, like that would. So Greg Cohen writes this bit, Max on Max, and tells Max, yeah, it's a bit where you're like, it's like a sex scene from a movie. And he's like, okay, now you're on your back and, you know, like make, make faces like you're having sex.

Okay, Max says. And I think he had his glasses on too. And then he's like, okay, now, now you're going to have like you're on set. And we're going to put in somebody there. Now you're going to be on top having sex. And it was Max fucking himself. And apparently towards the end of it, Max was like, wait a minute. Like, who else is going to be, who else is going to be having sex with me, you know?

It was amazing, and we put porny music to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, that came, I think it was, yeah, the great thing about that, even before there was HBO Max, there was Cinemax. So the idea of, like, Max being in a, yeah, yeah, the word Max being in a title of a channel kind of was there. Yeah, yeah. And then we would, that one where, like, Kona would just throw to it sometimes, right?

Yeah, yeah. It was almost like the lever. Yeah, yeah, the Walker, Texas Ranger lever. Yeah, just like, here's the thing that's, we can just cut to this. Yeah, yeah. And Max, I think, loved slash hated it. Yeah. Like you said, it's a lot of work.

I mean, is it, you know, and you were, was your first child wasn't born during that time. She was born kind of almost when I was done. I did it until she was born in June of 2000. And I think I left in September of 2000. So I only had like three months with a new baby. And that was the summer schedule, which was always a little easier. We got a few more vacation weeks during the summer back in the day. So it was, but it was hard.

And I will say that one of the biggest breaks I got was that the show went from five days a week. Originals about three months into my tenure's head writer, it to four days a week. And they started doing a rerun on Monday nights. And that was a huge game changer. I don't know how Robert. And then Marsh did, and even us as just staff writers, five days a week and all of you. I'll tell you how they did it in the, like the middle of the show, Wednesday and Thursday, was not very good. It was, it was just like that was where the ideas that, you know, just didn't, wouldn't make it on the show ended up.

And that was, Jeff Ross did that because they were such dicks to us early in the beginning. And, well, to Conan, not really to us. a great job of not letting us know how in danger we were. We were just like, we don't want to show. And, you know, and apparently even there was like one weekend where Conan was canceled and they did test shows with Greg Kinnear and they were not good. And so Conan wasn't canceled again. But I think Conan had to live a whole weekend thinking that his show was canceled.

And they were just so shitty and rude and awful. But they kept setting these ratings. bars and we kept the show just grew you know steadily not you know astronomically but steadily grew and we kept meeting all of their requests all of their challenges and they were like pissed and so they finally said well all right you're beating tom snider because tom snider was our competition at the time but i mean tom snider's show is just like two chairs and a in a backdrop your too expensive we are going to fire your band we're gonna where you can just have needle drop music you know you can just have pre-recorded music we're to fire your band and at the time apparently um reruns were

doing about as well as first run shows yes so jeff said well here's a great way to it'll save even more money put a rerun on was it friday or monday and monday yeah put a rerun on monday because they're already they're doing about as well and you're already then double dipping into the the profit on that show and they went oh okay yeah let's do that and we were just like oh fuck yeah it was amazing and on top of it all the writers got a little residual check for a rerun ran on monday night so like not only did we get a break that made it possible to catch our breath and live our lives and have families um but we also made an extra like whatever it was a couple hundred dollars a week each which was okay yeah that's great um yeah that was amazing would was it hard to like go from being one of the

guys that is expected to put stuff on the board to then now managing all those guys it was tricky i have to say it was super gracious colleagues like nobody i didn't feel that anybody was like because i think partly because it's a grueling job so not everybody wanted to jump and get it maybe and also i think i had i think the thing that helped me a lot is i was kind of good i'd run my college radio station, which was at this point 10 years earlier, but I'd had some experience running managerial sort of a little bit. And managing, like, because it was all a volunteer staff, but like, it was a big radio station, a commercial radio station in Providence, or I know they sold the station a few years ago. Yeah. Unfortunately, but it was a real job almost, and I did it while going to

school, but it was like a volunteer staff and you had to like, you know, basically get people to buy into how we're doing this together and you couldn't like be a dictator or a dick you know you had to kind of be consensus building and you know goal oriented but also just inclusive and collaborative and you know also say like I'm I'm not saying I'm the funniest one and that's why I'm the head writer I'm just also remember I'm good at remembering to turn phone calls return phone calls and like remembering to tell the prop guy that we need a live donkey for the for the sketch tomorrow afternoon you You know, so that I think, and I think there was a circle line show that we did, and Marsh got sick. I think he actually may have gotten seasick or fumes or whatever, but he couldn't actually do his job.

And I'd been sort of the lieutenant on that show that we did live from the circle line or whatever it was, free tape, but it was kind of live. And I just stepped up and, like, handled the pressure of that. I think Conan and Jeff were like, well, that guy may be. Yeah, yeah. Well, you were, I mean, if I may, you were very, very good at it. I think, you know, like, and especially good at managing people. You're a very good people manager. And there are people who are not that good at it.

And yet they do it, you know. Right. And, and you also were wonderfully ego absent. You never were like, I never felt like you were just pushing your ideas. And which is just, which is just like key too. you got to, you know, if it's not all for one, one for all, then, you know, it's not going to work. And you were very much that way. Oh, that's very kind of. Yeah. It's funny how, I still think about things that could have been better though. You always do. Yeah, yeah.

Even on the show. I do what I do. Don't remember them. Well, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mostly don't, but there's some. I'm a part of it because it's near and dear to me in my initial packet, there was a sketch that I, a bit that I wrote called Conan's publicist who like is basically trying to charge him. for all these placements, but it was like nothing. They're terrible. Yeah. Or they're like, you know, look, there's a restaurant that says, open late, nightly specials. So late nights, he circles the late nights.

So that's, I'm billing you for that. Right. And Robert Smigl ended up playing the character kind of as a thinly veiled Bernie Brilstein. So I said, Conan, I'm charging you for this. And the character's name Ira. And yesterday, I was walking out, I saw a sign at the place. I play tennis. It says they're having a lotka night for Hanukkah.

And I was like, oh, my God. How did I not think of Latka night and him trying to Bill Conan for Latka night at his local tennis club for Hanukkah? Yeah, that's 30 years later. After killing baby Hitler, that's the time machine. That's what you do with it. That's exactly what you do. You go back and you insert Latka night. Another thing I loved about you too when you were doing the job was that because, you know, there were late.

You know, there were hours that it went late. we had it was so as i my the phrase i coined is laying tracks for a train that you can hear coming you know that's so true and uh you would there would be times where you would almost pleadingly be like because uh and especially too because there were some people that were really good at fucking around yeah well we all me me being one of them but like Tommy blatchin Brian McCann and just just riffing that has nothing to do with anything and there would be times where I I just remember so many times you're going like, please, guys, please. Like, and like, patting the piece of paper that we're doing, like, please, we need to do this.

And then cut to like two minutes later, you're throwing a trash can down the stairs. Yeah, I'd be part of it. Or bowling in the hallway, you know, like somebody would be like, hey, I found a bowling ball. And then we'd be bowling in the hallway. And you're like, oh, okay, then, yeah. We got to have fun. We got to do that part. Exactly, yeah.

Brian Stack reminded me recently of, uh, we had mice. We had a mice problem? Yeah, you've heard, you know, the story. I know exactly why we had the mice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a drop ceiling in the conference room. Yeah. And Tommy Blatcha, after, and we, they would buy meals for us.

Yes. You know, you'd get, if you're going to be there for work late, you'd be there for dinner. Take out dinners. And Tommy would take his, his plate and go something like, well, good meal. Got to clean up. And then get on a chair, push the, the drop ceiling and just chuck his leftover plate just as hard as he could into the corner of it. And, and he'd do that every night and we would laugh, you know, and, and the, apparently the special, the guy that did special effects for the

whole building, his office was right above that space. And he's like, people were, he was telling people, yeah, and it clear out of my office. I have a terrible mouse infestation. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I wonder, well, all the way up on, on, on the 10th floor. Stack describes Tommy and Brian McCann just throwing food down the hall going like, why do we have mice? I don't understand it. Yeah. So wait, was that special effects here?

Was that Neil Schatz? Yeah, was Neil Schatz. Yeah. I was like, I did one piece of preparation for this talk today. Yeah. Which is I knew that you've worked on every, I think every show I've ever done pretty much. I've been able to work with you. So you were on happy endings as.

I wasn't on blackish. Yeah. you were. What is I? You came in and did as a favor, you played a patient in an episode at the hospital where Tracy Ellis Ross, and I looked it up. It's like, I know he did a blackish, and your character, we named you Mr. Shatz, which was Neil Shats.

I was a shout out to Neil Shats. There was a special effects guy on Conan who, the famous, Neil Shats, and the famous quote was, there was something where Conan was like on a skateboard with a, a, uh, uh, fire extinguisher raced with a skateboard and he like didn't get rigged safely and the Conan like slams crashed into a wall crash into a wall at a good rate of speed on a skateboard going backwards yeah yeah and the old thing was like oh he nearly shats himself when he because he was on the hook for that another show you did uh that we worked on together was happy endings yes you played kacey wilson's dad yes uh was i gay you were gay yeah yeah

But I remember that was a rude awakening for me because you're younger than me. And I remember David Kasp, who's a lot younger than me, you know, he's married to Casey and, you know, they were kids when they did that show. Yeah. And you were perfect for the part, but I remember being like, he's too young to play Casey Wilson's dad. I'm too young. You know, if I were, I couldn't play Casey Wilson's dad. And, like, just looked at the blank face of David Kasp, the creator of the show, was like, no, you're not too young. And neither is Andy.

Yeah, do the math. We wrote the math. We wrote the fact that you had married young. You were your character had married Megan Malali's character and you were a couple years younger than her and you were kids when you got married and all of that because she played Casey's mom. So anyway, so we worked on that. And then you did a voice on the ill-fated father of the pride. Father of the pride animated debacle TV show. Yeah, Sigfried and Roy, which the unfortunate mauling happened like a week or two.

two before it was supposed to air? No, it happened in September or October. I think October of 2003. That's actually the crazier part of it. It happened a year before the show premiered and we still did the show. Oh, wow. Which was a terrible idea. Oh, my God.

Yes, yes. I thought it happened. God, no. So you're animating a goofy Sigfried and Roy who are having fun and all this stuff. And Roy was horribly debilitated from a tiger attack. Right. On stage. Wow.

Yeah, in Las Vegas. Wow. It was, yeah, it was not so smart probably to keep doing that show. But like the money had all been spent and we sort of thought we could tap, dance through it and maybe get it, maybe we'd be okay. And we did face a lot of it, the Television Critics Association, whatever that is. And the summer before it went on the air, they have these big meetings and the TV critics come and they talk you to, panels and so on and there was a lot of like was it a good idea to keep doing this show do you really feel in your heart hearts but it was great cast you know john goodman Carl Reiner we had great guest

stars Lisa Kudrow Andy Richter I heard at the time too that Jeffrey Katzenberg got his on his hands and knees and begged them I witnessed this wow I was in jeff zoker's office at NBC and he was sort of a bit yeah yeah that he was doing like sort of you know ironic quotes around a but it was also not. Yeah, yeah. And he invoked. It was desperation. Yeah, yeah.

I think so. And I think he also, and Jeffrey was a master salesman. And one of his selling things was like, it would mean a lot to Roy if you kept doing the show. Wow. Like, it's keeping Roy alive, basically. Like, Jeff Zucker, don't kill Roy. Hasn't he been through enough. Exactly.

Let his legacy live on in goofy caricature. Yeah, yeah. Well, we had really fun. We had Dave Herman from office space, was played Roy, and he was hilarious. And now on Bob's Burgers. Bob's Burgers, it was fantastic. Yeah. That day that I came in to record that, too,

it ended up being a particularly lucrative day for me because on the drive to the job, I got a call, hey, after you're done with the recording session with Jonathan, there's this other DreamWorks project that they want to just try you for. And it was this movie. And after you all cleared out. And then they brought in, like, storyboards to play a lemur in this movie called Madagascar. And there were different, like, the character, the actual sort of character hadn't been set yet, like what he looked like.

And, and, you know, we tried different voices. And I just, and I told him, I was just basically doing, because Robert Smigel, who does triumph, the insult comic dog, has a theory that all dogs speak with the same accent, which is like a vaguely, a very funny. vaguely Eastern European old person's accent. So I just, I said, and I tried all different kinds of voices for it. And the one they settled on was just basically, a high voice, that same kind of accent. Like, I don't know why. And I mean, and it was funny because it was like, Sasha Baron Cohen was King Julian and he had basically like a Desi accent. And then, and then, uh, Cedric the entertainer is his.

right-hand man who has no accent. And then there's me with this little accent. It's a good choice. Mort's funny. And if the character animation on Mort is adorable. I went through two series. It was, it's probably aside from the Conan show, probably the most

lucrative thing I've ever done. And but it was funny. As lucrative is chef boy, R.D., to a key, it's everything. Maybe a little a little more. Okay. But no, it was funny too, because I did that and then like six months later they said he said uh they want you to go back in and record

more of that uh voice that you did and i i was like what voice and and i didn't even realize i thought i read for them and that was it and i they gave me a little session fee but i didn't realize like oh no i have the part and then i'm going to be doing it more and it but it took like six months and i was like oh shit i'm in a big animated movie you know pretty cool those characters, those side characters, especially in Madagascar, like the lemurs and they're the penguins and hilarious. Yeah, yeah, they're so funny. Yeah, well, they, you know, that's why they went on to have like, basically, a show about the penguins and then sort of a show about the lemurs, you know. The guys behind that Tom McGrath and Eric Darnell are really funny, really

funny. Really, really funny. Yeah. Well, now when you left late night, which is around the time that I left, was it? I think I left three months after you did. Coincidence? I don't think so. Thanks for listening, folks. He hates Conan O'Brien. He was only there for me. No, I guess it probably just sort of coincided with it was time to move on. Yeah. And it's funny because my child, first child was born. Yeah. Right when I was leaving Conan to come out here and do other stuff. He's just a little younger than my daughter. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was time. Like, it was a hard job. It was great. It was. It was. the greatest job. I loved working at that show, but it was kind of time. And I, you know, I remember I wanted to stay in New York and I remember meeting with like the big owner of the agency that the talent agency that I was with. And he at some point it said, you know, he said, you know, you got to come to L.A. It's the home office of the business. You can't stay in New York. And actually, Tim Sarkis, who was the manager that we both share who's great. He also said, you don't want to stay at the party

too long. Yeah. So it was time, but I always look back and go like, some of it is like I wish, you know, I miss it. I miss that. I missed a lot of. And then the show went on to do so much funny stuff for the next nine years. Yeah, yeah.

In New York before coming to L.A. Yeah, no. When the show went, because they, when the show was on longer without me than it had been on with me. Right. That hurt. Yeah. I was like, oh, because it was like, okay, I, you know, yeah, they're doing pretty good

stuff but they've it's only two three years and then like but it was like oh no they've surpassed the whatever the seven years seven is seven eightish years i was on it's like oh shit yeah i guess they didn't need me uh and then you and i got to work together on one of my favorite things ever absolutely we did a show called andy barker p i that conan and i co-created it's it's my favorite of the three shows that i was the lead on It was a sweet little show. Check it out, people. Find it. It's on somewhere. Might be on one of the streamers. I think it was on Peacock because it's NBC. I hope it is. It's not, I haven't looked recently. You can probably find it somewhere on the internet. It was a perfect little show. I always like to say this. This is crazy. And this is boastful. But you're you're here and I'll say it. There's a thing called Metacritic, which like ranks all the crit that basically takes all the critic reviews and gives you an overall score of all the critics. television critics, and we got a higher Metacritic score for our series in its just six episodes than a show that came on the same season, which was 30 Rock.

Oh, wow. Because it was a really well-done show. Conan, we've just, so we developed that show, and Conan had this idea of, like, you know, a mild-mannered guy who kind of falls into the private eye business. And it was inspired because he would go, he had a house in Connecticut, and he would drive by like a double-decker strip mall that had stores underneath and offices above

and he just was like and I do this too like who's got a fucking office up there like what could possibly survive up there right and then the premise was it was a detective in this office and then he moved out and I move in

with my you know my new accounting firm you hang out your shingle my solo accounting business exactly and you're very proud and we have this nice montage Jason Enzler directed all the episodes, including the pilot. And we have this sad, lonely montage of nobody showing up.

Yeah, yeah. Business is super slow. And then this mysterious woman walks in and mistakes you for Luce Daseyak, who was the prior occupant of this office, who was a private eye. Yeah. And out of decency and some desperation, you decide to take the case. Yeah, I think she dumps some money on the table. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah. Should I do this? So I just did my, should I do this? That wasn't where I was planning to do it. No, it wasn't that. Okay. I mean, it wasn't that hurtful. I mean, which just means it wasn't that great.

It's got a hurt. No, I only do them complimentary. The one I was going to do it was like Andy, Andy, people don't realize this, but Andy, okay, we'll jump ahead quickly to dancing with the stars, which is an unbelievable thing that you've accomplished, and I'm so proud of you and happy for you. Thank you.

And I'm also not entirely surprised that, you know, even though, you know, you have aches and pains and creakiness, et cetera, that you are kind of naturally athletic. And I always tell the story of, I wasn't there on the day, but this charity softball game that you played in at Yankee Stadium

back in the late night days. And you agreed to play, and it was other people from late night, mostly staff people, and you played. We played CBS News. Okay. And you, like, I'm embellishing this, but like it was your turn to come to the plate,

and I imagine you having a margarita in your hand and handing it to somebody. Hold this while I got to go, bat. And then like you, and I did see that because it's on video. Yeah. You know, okay. How do I, where do I stand? We're not, not really. You know how to play baseball. You know how to play baseball. Softball. But you crushed this ball to like the actual, actual like warning track of Yankee Stadium, like way past little fence they had set up. And it was just like, no, no, it was, it was, because home, home plate was set up on third base. So it was over the softball. It was, it was a legit.

It was a bomb. I think it was on the second. level. It was a massive bomb and it's like, oh, he's naturally. And I didn't, and then I hit another one. I hit two home runs that same game and it was like, and I hit the first one and I knew I got a piece of it

and then by the time I got the first base, I saw the umpire doing the circle thing. I was like, I was like, oh shit I, you know, I hit a home run. And and then when I got up again and I hit it and I like started

laughing because I knew the second I hit it that like that one was even more of like oh that's out of here you know so that was really fun and that was the other things I always remember from that day and I was just talking to somebody about this the other day that we it was we were playing against CBS news we didn't know why nobody knew like I'm sure one person knew the details the rest of us were just like yeah sure and it was me and there were some riders but like lots of stage hands Didn't Morley safer have sneaky power to the left? No, no. Dan Rather was there in full head-to-to-toe Yankees uniform.

Oh, my God. I don't think you've ever told me that. With stirrups, even like the stirrups. For a photo-op with Rudy Giuliani, then the mayor, you know, and then never was gone. Showed up in full Yankees uniform for the charity out of it and then was like didn't play a second in the. game and nobody else had this uniform on he just it might have said it might have said CBS news i don't but it was a full yeah like baseball uniform head to toe yeah and um he apparently he wanted to anchor the news with that and the presidents at the network at the time we don't we can't let you do

that he got up i well can i still chew tobacco will that be all right um the other thing that I remember about that day was that we found out too after we started it that the whole game was a charity for I think like an editor that had died unexpectedly and it was for his family

this fundraiser for his family and we murdered them we won like 15 to 1 or something like so you merced the other team yeah so it was like and when we we were finding that out as the game was like because they were starting you know like people would be on microphone talking about like this this great guy and that we're

here to help his family and stuff and then we're like oh we just scored six runs and they have nothing so piled on yeah piled on in their moment of sorrow the money was the money spent okay yeah i'm sure the family i'm sure yeah yeah absolutely but it was yeah that was that was a pretty that was a pretty cool day so that was where my and impression oh well thank you with them Thank you. Handing a margarita to the bad boy and saying, Home ride. I'm going to have a home ride.

I'm going to go yard. You did. Well, now, was it a tough transition out here? I mean, we're not, I'm not going to keep you much longer. But I just am curious, like, how was it when you came out here? When I came out here from late night, it was like, oh, my God, it's such a different culture. And, like, not nearly as funny or fun, you know. Well, I've been really lucky.

I never really had to. You can't say, you're right. See, you're a lot smarter than I am because I'm just insulted everyone I've ever worked with. But I honestly have never really had to work on a show that was a grind. That was lame. That was super lame. Like I've had to use that word. Sorry, folks.

Oh, sorry, yeah. I, and I didn't have like, I really never worked on a multicam sitcom, which not that there can be great ones of those and there are and there were. but they also have a hype to be lame, I think, because it's a hard thing to do well. And secondly, the schedule for writers can be really grueling if it's not going well and the rewrites and you do a run through on the day two days before and it doesn't work

and then you're throwing the entire script out and the network can also say because they know you just have those standing sets. They can kind of go like, we didn't like that story. So start from page one, start over. And if you know you don't have a showrunner who will stand up to them,

that can be really awful for, writers and I never really had that situation. So I didn't have some of the, you know, writers from that era going like, oh, look at me. I'm driving home in my nice car, which I can afford, but it's four o'clock in the morning and I'm miserable. Yeah. And I'm going to have to be back here in four and a half hours and eat shit again. Yeah. And I just didn't, I didn't have that many of those. So I feel very genuinely lucky on the shows that I got to work on. Yeah. One of them being Andy Barker and happy endings and Blackish and how about your mother and I never really had like oh I can't believe I have to go in and write jokes for

yeah this shitty show and by the way a lot of these you know that's the other thing is like somebody there's a quote it's not mine it might be Conan but I don't think so but somebody said like it took a lot of really smart people really funny people working really hard to make something that shitty yeah you know and that is true like it's sometimes it just doesn't really work you know you get interference the actors don't nail it the stories don't quite track the premise is weak. And you can have really smart, funny people trying to make it good, but it's... Well, it's also, too, it's the whole thing that makes storytelling, interesting, is a singular

perspective. And there's no singular perspective. It's all filtered through a dozen different viewpoints. So like, and, you know, you will get shows that have not necessarily just one person's, but at least a unified perspective among the people. people that are there. Yes. And they have,

they're like copacetic and they understand each other. And that's why you have like arrested development. Right. You know, like that's very much Mitch Hurwitz. Yeah, or 30 Rock or, you know, community or all these shows on all the brilliant animated shows.

Yeah, yeah. That are, that really is just one person. And I, it's always amazing to me that they, nobody has figured that out. Like that there, or that they don't,

that there isn't more sort of like, look, we've hired this person because, they have a track record of being creative and funny and unique. Why don't we just let them do their thing rather than fucking with them constantly? I think that's true. I do think that those, especially in comedy, it's very hard really to do it alone, though. So you have to let that person do their show and let them hire the best people to help them do it.

Because like The Simpsons is 25 writers and it's a brilliant show. And, you know, I think arrested was heavily Mitch, but Mitch had really funny people. people. Oh, and Mitch has, but he had like a crew, like a tight crew of riders around him that were very, exactly, like, that shared a sensibility. That's exactly right. That's like, they rubbed off on each other. But your larger point of just like let the good people do their show is very well taken. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's totally true. And it doesn't happen enough. And, you know, it doesn't seem like it's happening more than it used to. What was the first show that you kind of started to like run the room, as they say? Um, well, I, I was lucky in that I got pilots on. I got this, I did this show called, I made a pilot, for the year I left Conan. I did a pilot that spring. Was that the one with Bateman? The next thing I did was a show with Jason Bateman called The Jake Effect.

It was the show he did actually before arrested. Yeah. And is that what you meant or was there another pilot that you sold? I did a pilot the year before, multi-camera that did not get picked up. Okay. And that was a learning experience. you know, it was fine, but I, uh, I, I, I, I did the Jason Bateman show and they let me run at myself. This is also back in the day where like, I think I, because I presented well as a

grown up and I had run, so to speak, Conan's room, even though it was a different, it wasn't storytelling. It was right. Just volume of hilarious shit. And I'm, and I'm sure that like they, they, they can understand what a zoo that is. Exactly. And how like, what a managerial feet it is. That said, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let somebody like me from that position do that again anymore. I get lots of, you know, offers now to be the sort of elder statesman supervisor of somebody who, you know, I got to do that by myself 20 years ago. I don't think that that happens much anymore. They would put somebody like me to sort of hold their hand. Yeah, yeah. But I was lucky enough and Bateman was just seven, that show with Jason Bateman, the Jake Effect, it was just like

seven episodes total. And it was kind of a mid-season show. And I had really good people helping me and I figured it out. So I never really came up through the ranks in the sitcom. Well, as much, I kind of started running my own shows. And then I was on staff at How I Met Your Mother as a consultant, but I wasn't running the room. Yeah. So I've only ever run rooms of shows that I was in charge of. I mean, I didn't come up through the ranks and whatever or on a show and become an executive producer in season three of a show or whatever. But like, like, say on a show like Blackish, are you running that room or is?

Well, on Blackish, they, Kenya had never run a sitcom before. Yeah. And Larry Wilmore was his original supervisor or the partner on the pilot. He went to do his show on Comedy Central, the Knightley Report. And I was there as just part-time as part of a deal I was in at ABC.

And I loved Kenya. And I met the cast came in for like a meat and green. And I was like, oh, my God. And the pilot was really good. And the stories, we had a great staff. And the stories you were breaking were really interesting. And so Kenya and Larry to some extent, because he was leaving.

And then the network were like, Do you want to be the showrunner with Kenya? Kenya was running it, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I said, yes. Yeah. Even though I'd just done three years of that on happy endings, I was like, this show is, there's something special here. So I jumped in on that.

Yeah. Well, it paid off. It was paid off. It was, that was a great experience. Yeah. How do you feel about just comedy in general, like in TV comedy? Because I have people ask me and I don't know what the hell to tell them. it doesn't i mean it doesn't feel great out there the business yeah here's what you know what's

really really bad and it didn't really other than that that show i did with mark marron a million years ago short attention span theater that was really the only time i really worked with comedy central on a comedy central show and that wasn't a landmark comedy central show but the disappearance essentially of comedy central as this place and much shout out to kent altraman and Sarah Babineau, who I think presided over the kind of heyday of it. But even before them, it was starting, you know, a Bright Citizen's Brigade in the late 90s into, you know, obviously South Park game changer, massive property. But literally, like, we have this elite of incredible people like Nick Kroll and Amy Schumer

and the Broad City folks and Key and Peel from this heyday of Comedy Central. Where are those shows? Like, it can't just be, you know, in places for those shows. be like, you know, Tim Robinson's show is brilliant. I think you should leave. But there's was a network that did a lot of those. And I wish that to me is a big, just the sort of farm, or even the fact that MTV would try to do a sketch show or a little talk show. You know, John Stewart had his first show on MTV as a talk show. And that gave him, you know, that was his training ground to then, you know, become the Daily Show guy. I just, that part of it makes me sad that

there aren't. And I guess you say it's on the internet, right? And that's where it's going to be. where it's going to live. A dream, you know, if you're listening, and I know David Ellison listens to the show a lot, the new owner of Paramount, but if he was to revive the Comedy Central brand, that would make me extraordinarily happy. And it is a real brand. It's actually a dereliction of duty that, like, FX on Hulu should not be the only kind of cable entity with a profile that has done well in streaming. You know what I mean? There were these basic cable brands, and not many of them have made the transition to streaming. I don't, yeah, I don't know what the, I mean, you mentioned Kett Alterman, who's an old friend of both of ours, and, and he did, he, like you said, he oversaw this sort of really golden age, and, you know, like an Andy Daley show was on at that time, all these amazingly Key and Peele and all these amazing shows.

And Key and Peele was big, and he told me once that they were doing marketing of, and they were just, and they were, specifically targeting people that considered themselves Key and Peel fans that were like, I love Key and Peel. And many of them were surprised to find out it was a television show. They just thought that they did funny clips on the internet. And Kent was like, I don't know what to do about that.

I don't know how to change that. And now Comedy Central is just South Park and Daily Show and I don't know what else. Well, there's two things. One is there's ways to make money, even if it is an internet presence. Yeah. You know, like, I'm convinced that S&L and whoever is making a lot of money on YouTube, right? On clips.

Right. There's that. Secondly, yeah, maybe does that tell you need to, is sketch comedy especially susceptible to being clipped and consumed in that way? Yeah. And the three-minute things that people send to each other. And you don't even know that it's a TV show. I just thought those guys were funny online dudes. I totally get that.

Yeah, yeah. The other thing is, like, try to do more things that you need to watch a whole episode of. Like, maybe they should, you know, and they have done that. that. You know, they had Nora from Queens, you know, I didn't mean. Like, like, and that was great. Yeah. And it costs money to do that. Yeah. Totally. And they need to do more of those kinds of shows. Yeah. I don't know if they will. But it was such a, you know, that's a heartbreak. And then how do I feel about I mean, stand up live comedy? I think people, I think in an encroaching AI world, people are going to want to see their people live. They're going to want to see sketch comedy live. My daughter, Plug, is in a

sketch comedy group called Booby Trap in New York City. And you can go now. That's the only reason you're here, isn't it? It's exactly right. Yeah. They actually have a very funny sketch about a dystopian universe in which you have different jobs you can have. And one of them is late night talk show host.

And somebody mentions, oh, could I have a sidekick like Andy Richter? And they go, Andy Richter is divergent. And I don't even know what she means. That means, but I watched them do the sketch and it got a big laugh from the audience. And so you're- Any shout-out is a good shout-out. Yes. There are 100 people in a club in Brooklyn. and could have laughed at you being divergent.

Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, live comedy, it does seem to be the thing, but it is really, it's like, what is TV, you know. And then people say, a lot of times I've met with managers who represent some of these comedians, and I think it's changing a little bit because of the nature of streaming, but back in a few years ago, it was like,

yeah, she doesn't really need to do a sitcom. Yeah. Because she's on the road, building her act and building her next Netflix special and has a $30 million of your business that she doesn't need to service, you know, with a TV show. Yeah, yeah. I think now if there was a 10 episode thing, people also do like to tell stories in different ways and different modes and test themselves. So I'm optimistic. I don't know. I don't know.

What do you do? I mean, because you, you, I mean, we talked about it personally, but you're at the end of a deal. I just finished, yeah. For what, explain what that deal means. I was in a deal for a long time at ABC where I render services, and they like me a lot as somebody who supervises other people and or comes on as a showrunner like I did on Blackish. Yeah. Excuse me, as I did on Blackish. Just channeling my mom, grammar. Oh. Yeah.

Just for you. I had to do it. Just stop it. No. As I did on Blackish. But you're, now that's not what a comedy guy does. No, it's a boring asshole. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I cannot speak in vernacular. So they liked me doing that and then they like me creating my own shows, but it's been tough to sell. It's tough to get something up and running. I had a really cool idea that it's just timing. You know, you've got to find the right.

I also find, like, as I've gotten older, I really like writing with people. So collaborating with somebody to flesh out an idea. So I have people that I kind of go like, oh, well, let's try to write something together. Because it's lonely and it's funnier if you write something with somebody, I think anyway. I think especially with comedy. Well, that's not always the case. Sometimes it is one person's unique point of view. The thing that I've noted is that everybody that has, like Tim Robinson, has a writing partner.

Like everybody, you know, yeah, like there's not a lot of just did it alone, you know, will Farrell came up, but he had Adam McKay. Right. you know, sort of like, because then you do, you bounce off each other and you, you know, you create kind of a, you know, like, because I'm sure that what, what's Zach's last name on? Canaan, I think. Is that right? Yeah, yeah.

But like, I'm sure like a lot of Tim Robinson is that Canaan, but it just happens to be that Tim's the one that's on camera, you know, and I'm sure that Tim does stuff that inspires Zach to be funny in their way. And they have writers and they get the writers that are going to support that sensibility. Yeah, but it is like you do kind of need to pair up with people. And there's a magic to writing comedy with people and it's fun and it's just more fun. And it's all it's all kind of like, let's try to make this as fun as possible. Let's make something good and try to have fun.

It's cliche, but it's like I find it more fun. Well, that was for me, for me for years, you know, to call myself a writer didn't feel like I felt like illegitimate calling myself a writer because all of my writing was sitting in a room yelling things out that when I. up on a computer screen that we, you know, it's like, and it's like, I never sat down and sweat it out writing. I just sort of like had ideas and, you know, fixed things and whatever. So. Well, I have that thing. My brother is a beautiful writer. He's a poet. And he's like a published poet and he teaches poetry. And he's when he decides to write prose like an essay about something, it's beautifully. Yeah, yeah. It's really astonishing. So I'm always like, he's the real writer. I have a nice house.

by writing dumb jokes, but he's a real writer. Yeah, yeah. I wrote, I wrote Lodcanite. Yeah, I didn't even think of Lachanite at the time. I had Lachanite with Conan O'Brien. After the fact thought of Lachcanite. 30 years later. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming in.

I love you so much. I love you too, man. You're such a big part of my whole time in the business. Yeah, definitely. And like I say, like among some of my favorite, happiest, most productive times. So I'm so glad you could come in and just walk down memory lane with me. Thank you for having me.

It was blessed. And thank all of you for listening. And I'll be back next week with more of the three questions. I did not touch on any of the three questions. You didn't. And you also didn't get into the fact that I share the name of a famous person. And you're going to be getting a lot more listeners than you deserve for my name. Yeah, this isn't a Broadway star.

Sorry if you figured that out. Folks. But this is not the Broadway star. And thank God. The three questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco production. It is produced by Sean Doherty and engineered by Rich Garcia. Additional engineering support by Eduardo Perez and Joanna Samuel. Executive produced by Nick Leow, Adam Sacks, and Jeff Ross. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, with assistance from Maddie Ogden. Research by Alyssa Graal. forget to rate and review and subscribe to the three questions with Andy Richter

wherever you get your podcasts. And do you have a favorite question you always like to ask people? Let us know in the review section. Can't you tell my loves are growing? Can't you feel it ain't it showing? Oh, you must be a knowing. I've got a big big love. This has been a Teen Coco production.

Thank you.