Whatever Happened To Andy Richter?
In many ways, Conan O'Brien transformed the late-night talk show scene. His imaginative and often absurdist sense of humor was so influential it seems almost prescient in retrospect. In the pre-Internet age and the AOL era, O'Brien's show produced gags that would be instant memes in today's world. His naturalistic style, offbeat wit, and affably self-deprecating manner made his guests feel at ease and charmed generations of viewers. But a game-changing talk show host needed a perfect sidekick — and O'Brien had one in Andy Richter.
From 1993 to 2000, Richter was by O'Brien's side on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." The ultimate straight man to O'Brien's antics, Richter was all-in on Conan's shenanigans, often veering from the deadpan delivery of his sofa persona to inhabit over-the-top characters for a laugh. Sharp, intelligent, and comedically versatile, Richter was one of the funniest — and too often, most underrated — comedians of the era. In the years since, Richter has generally found steady work, even rejoining O'Brien on a handful of projects. But unlike his late-night co-star, he has kept a fairly low profile overall, causing many fans of his early work to wonder what he's been up to. Richter fans of the world unite as we dive into what Andy's been working on lately.
He was the quintessential sidekick — and he loved it
That Andy Richter epitomized the perfect sidekick was something O'Brien's writing team understood so well they wrote it into a sketch. The 2018 "Conan" bit finds Richter struggling to perform his basic job duties after the show took a four-week break. To help him get back on track, a human resources employee shows up to remind him of his job duties: "You need to make the host believe the irrational fantasy that he is the funniest person in the world. How do we do this? L.F.T.L. — Laugh first, think later."
But in reality, Richter brought much more than paid laughter to the set. Evaluating Richter's contributions, a 2021 New York Times piece noted the comedian "persuasively countered the popular image of the sidekick as a pathetic sycophant," "expanded and refined the job," and "earnestly performed the old-school work of nightly sidekicking ... without ever sacrificing his voice or dignity." Much more than a second fiddle charged with setting up jokes for the boss, Richter's casual everyman energy served as a perfect complement to O'Brien's larger-than-life personality.
For Richter's part, he loved the gig. After meeting O'Brien, Richter told Rich Eisen, "We just hit it off immediately." He sensed right away that he could be as "dumb and gross and stupid and silly" as he wanted with O'Brien, who was eager to hire him on the spot. He had a blast working at 30 Rock, calling his job "a clubhouse in a national monument."
He is comfortable not being number one
It's hard to imagine most comedians would be comfortable making a career out of being a sidekick instead of taking over their own show. And long before he appeared alongside O'Brien, Andy Richter had proven the comedy chops for it. After getting his start in improv in the 1980s, Richter had already started to build up his own modest fan base. In her podcast "Mayim Bialik's Breakdown," Mayim Bialik fondly recalled watching the then quite young comedian perform in "The Real Live Brady Bunch," a '90s stage show where actors performed line-for-line episodes of "The Brady Bunch." When she learned he would be appearing on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," it was for Richter's brilliant comedy that she tuned in — not O'Brien's.
Earlier in his career, Richter had to work through his concerns about being "classic, you know, codependent wanted to sit next to high-strung talk show host." He told Bialik he spent a long time wondering if there was something fundamentally wrong with him that he wasn't focused on becoming the top banana himself. But he eventually came to realize that he's been the star, and it wasn't something he got a "charge" out of. "I'd rather there be three people in front of me getting all the attention because most of the attention is dreary, just boring."
A New Zealand gig came with a high cost to his family
It's no secret that working in show business can put a strain on a performer's family. It often requires actors to spend months away from their loved ones. There's a lot of pressure associated with the work, and for many performers outside of the highest-paid segment, that pressure can have a financial component. For Andy Richter, the strain of time away from his family directly affected his health while he was away from his family on a New Zealand-based project.
Richter recounted the experience on "Really Famous With Kara Mayer Robinson," recalling his time on what he called a "really fun job" — the kids' science fiction action film "Aliens in the Attic." Filming required him to spend three months in New Zealand, what Richter called "a tremendous strain on everybody" as his children were still quite young — just eight and three years old at the time. Despite being only 42 years old at the time, he suffered a stroke shortly after arriving back home. "I woke up and I was really dizzy," he recounted. When the nausea and coordination issues lasted for several days, Richter got an MRI, which is how he learned he had experienced a stroke — likely related to a combination of high blood pressure and sleep apnea exacerbated by the stress of his recent job. Luckily, Richter says, his doctors "really checked under the hood" and gave him an otherwise clean bill of health.
Starting over after his divorce was a challenge
Going through a divorce is never easy. But the longer a couple is married, the more difficult it can be to move on when things fall apart. After more than two decades of marriage, Andy Richter and his wife, comedy writer Sarah Thyre, decided to amicably part ways in 2019. It's a hard enough transition to experience under any circumstances. But for Richter, his very public persona made him a target of Internet trolls, something he opened up about to Uproxx in 2020. The comedian found the abuse "mind-boggling," adding, "This is the dissolution of my family."
Richter said one of the biggest challenges after such a long marriage was learning to be by himself. Speaking to Mayim Bialik, Richter said he found the isolation "agonizing at first," adding that he cried more in the first two months than he had in the previous two decades put together. To get through it, he did what a lot of divorcees do — listen to music and hit the gym. Richter says he lived above a gym and would hit the elliptical machine "when I started to really spiral."
As someone who had been married for most of his adult life, the comedian said he also found it hard to learn how to date again. "I'm just used to being with someone that I'm deeply committed to," he told Bialik. But it apparently didn't take him too long to get back into the swing of things, announcing his recent engagement in 2022.
Andy loves working in television
Although the world knows and loves Andy Richter as a talk show guy, his heart is in acting and he would love to be doing more of it. As Richter told Uproxx, "I didn't set out to be Andy Richter on television, I set out to be a comic actor, a character actor." Instead of building his resume with TV roles and expanding his potential as an actor, Richter spent years of his life working on the late-night TV scene.
But in between his stints in late night, Richter has certainly managed to show off his acting skills through the years. From 2002 through 2003, he was the star of his own sitcom "Andy Richter Controls the Universe." Although the show was canceled after only 19 episodes, it maintains a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting it may have just been ahead of its time. He later starred in the short-lived Fox sitcom "Quintuplets" as the hard-pressed father of a set of quints. Over the years, Richter has also had a handful of guest appearances on television. He has shown up on "Hot in Cleveland," "Bones," and "30 Rock," to name just a few. More recently, Richter appeared in the Netflix series "The Santa Clarita Diet" as the boss of Drew Barrymore's character Sheila.
He appeared as quintuplets on Arrested Development
Shortly after his series "Quintuplets" fizzled out, Andy Richter took a semi-regular role on "Arrested Development — technically, five of them. "Arrested Development" was known for integrating meta-humor and pop culture allusions into its storytelling, so it's no accident that Richter was written into the series as an alternate universe version of himself as one of five quintuplets. In the "Arrested Development" world, Andy Richter plays a self-absorbed show business version of himself.
He also shows off his comedy skills by appearing as the fictional Andy's four identical quintuplet brothers. Long-haired Donnie Richter is the soft-spoken "sensitive" brother who works as George Michael's teacher at his new-age private school, Openings. There's also Rocky Richter-Wang, the "risk-taker" who plays his brother Andy's stunt double on screen. Chareth Richter, who never actually appears on-screen outside of a Richter family photo, is "the family flirt." Coming up last is Emmett Richter, a compulsive hoarder who refuses to have his face shown on-screen despite being a quintuplet. All total, the Richter brothers appeared in nine episodes of the cult-favorite series and served as a reminder that Andy is a hilarious and versatile character actor. Praising him on Reddit, one fan cheered, "He does such an amazing job. I can usually tell which one it is even when they're disguised as each other."
He has done quite a bit of voice acting
Even if the world of live-action television hasn't had nearly enough Andy Richter performances, many fans are surprised to learn just how extensive the actor's voice-acting experience is. Richter's most well-known voice-acting role is as the annoying but adorable mouse lemur Mort in the "Madagascar" animated franchise. After voicing the furry critter in the 2005 film "Madagascar," Richter returned to the Dreamworks franchise for three more films, 82 episodes of "The Penguins of Madagascar," 78 episodes of "All Hail King Julien," and a couple of TV specials.
In 2017, Richter was cast in "Big Hero 6: The Series," appearing in eight episodes. Some of his other notable voice acting roles include Chronos from "Justice League Action," Brave from Prime's "The Stinky & Dirty Show," and Mayor Hansock in Disney's "Big City Greens." The comedian has also acted in several adult animated series. He played a Straight Arrow Scout dad in "King of the Hill," showed up for two episodes of "Robot Chicken," and appeared in several episodes of "American Dad!" in various roles. He also played Lloyd, a businessman who calls a tea room trying to set up a tee time, on the Comedy Central crank call puppet show "Crank Yankers." And in 2023, he joined the "Star Trek" universe as the Rigelian Beljo Tweekle in the hilariously unhinged "Lower Decks" episode "Twovix." Richter also voiced a Marine in the video game "Halo 4."
He has a couple of hilarious podcasts
It's the golden age of podcasting, so of course someone with Andy Richter's immense well of talent would get in on the action. And if you haven't had a chance to check out Richter's podcast "The Three Questions With Andy Richter," you'll definitely want to add it to your playlist. First airing in 2019 and produced by the Earwolf comedy podcasting network, the podcast finally gives Richter a chance to play the host for a change — but without all the pressure of late-night television.
Every one-hour episode of the podcast finds Richter asking his guests the same three simple, straightforward questions. First, where do they come from? Next, where are they going? And finally, what have they learned? It's a perfect setup for a comedian who has built his brand around the persona of a midwestern everyman, and it's surprising how conducive to personal connection those three simple questions can be.
Richter's podcast has hosted some fairly high-profile guests from a wide range of public-facing professions including acting, comedy, fashion, football, news, and more. Included in the mix are Josh Gad, Johnny Knoxville, Isaac Mizrahi, Joe Madden, Rachel Maddow, Nathan Lane, and Fred Armisen, just to name a few. And recently, Richter has started a second podcast, "The Novelizers With Andy Richter." Each episode features a classic film that's been novelized and then narrated by guests like Felicia Day, Will Forte, and Wayne Brady.
His name is now part of the culture
In a world where it's getting harder to stay relevant amid a steady stream of influencers and flash-in-the-pan celebrities, Andy Richter has managed to remain a popular figure through the decades. And now, thanks to Starboi3 and Doja Cat, he's been immortalized in the annals of Gen Z culture — albeit in the lyrics of an utterly NSFW trap song. The single — titled "Dick" — was originally released on SoundCloud in 2019. It didn't catch a lot of buzz when it first came out, but like so many Gen Z things, the song later rose to prominence after going viral on TikTok.
The rather explicit song is about exactly what it probably seems like it would be about. In the most G-rated terms possible, the song expresses the joy of experiencing an intimate encounter with a rather enthusiastic partner. The lyrics have a playful tone to them with banger lines like "I just got Morty & Rick'd" and "Thicker than Andy Richter."
Conan O'Brien addressed the song with Richter on "Conan" in 2020, reading off a few of the lyrics. "Finally impacting the culture!" Richter grinned in response. When asked how it felt to be "namechecked," though, Richter admitted "It's fun," but that he didn't love his name referring to "the voluptuousness of a woman." But O'Brien's explication concluded that "thicker than Andy Richter" referred to something much more flattering for a man, with the host adding, "No one's ever going to say, whip out that Conan."
He is grateful for the steady work, but it's not always certain
If it seems like he's not around as much these days, it's not because Andy Richter isn't still very much active. For Richter, staying a little out of the spotlight is just a part of who he is — so much so, that he isn't always sure how much of his private life he's willing to reveal on social media. Speaking to Kara Mayer Robinson, Richter chalked this up to "midwestern humility bull****." At the same time, he added, "I do want to protect my personal life and I don't want to serve it up as content ... if you put something out in the world, someone will turn it sh****."
But despite keeping his cards close to the vest, particularly through some of the difficult times he's experienced in his personal life over the past few years, the comedian is still very much around. Throughout the many ups and downs life has thrown at him, Richter has continued to work more or less steadily — even if it has been touch and go from time to time. Richter compared his professional life to floating on a melting iceberg. Just as he would start to worry, another iceberg would come along that he could hop onto, usually one that came with a decent paycheck. "It's a little slow right now," Richter continued, adding, "It's more just a feeling of, 'Put me in, Coach.'" The world could always use a little more Andy Richter, so hopefully those icebergs will just keep coming.