Richard Kind is the Platonic ideal of a character actor. When he shows up in something—as Larry David’s cousin in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” as Rudy Giuliani in “Bombshell”—you’re in for an “Oh, it’s that guy! I love that guy!” moment. With his Borscht Belt rhythms and his talent for tetchiness, Kind seems, at sixty-eight, like a throwback to Paul Lynde or Dom DeLuise: combustible comic personalities who added a dollop of whipped cream to the great pancake of show business. “I can’t be the Bob Newhart or Mary Tyler Moore, the maypole in a sitcom,” he told me recently. “I’m a satellite character.” Despite his hundreds of acting credits, from Stephen Sondheim musicals to Pixar cartoons, Kind has what one might call a Goldilocks level of fame: beloved by everyone in the know, but not too famous to get mobbed by fans, like his close friend George Clooney is.
Case in point: when we met at the second-floor café at Fairway, the Upper West Side market a few blocks from his apartment, he blended in, unbothered, with his fellow-nebbishes. “It’s the greatest,” he said, over a coffee and an avocado toast (topped with an egg ordered runny). “And I’ll walk home and one person will notice me.” It was a warm spring day, yet Kind showed up in a scratchy-looking plaid sweater that he filched from “Only Murders in the Building,” on which he plays a guy with antibiotic-resistant pink eye. (Much of his wardrobe is taken from sets.) “One time,” he went on, “I was walking with Brian d’Arcy James, and some guy comes up to me and goes, ‘Didn’t you used to run the porn stand on Thirty-fourth Street?’ ” He grinned wide. “There’s poetry to that.”
Kind’s latest gig, however, has given him what may be his biggest reach yet. On “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” the Netflix talk show streaming live on Wednesday nights, he’s the Ed McMahon-like announcer, playing a version of himself from behind a lectern. He and Mulaney have known each other for years—Kind voices Mulaney’s father on “Big Mouth,” and both appear in the classic “Documentary Now!” episode “Original Cast Album: Co-Op.” “Everybody’s Live” (which wraps up its first full season this month, after a six-episode trial run last year) ditches the traditional late-night format for something looser and stranger. Henry Winkler might share the stage with a funeral director, and callers weigh in on such subjects as cruises and whether dinosaur skeletons are put together incorrectly. Kind, baffled but game, gets roped into the dada humor. On one episode, he shows off his non-sequitur “party starters.” On another, we’re told that he has suffered a traumatic brain injury that makes him believe he’s Gene Simmons, from Kiss.
“He likes me! Crazy!” Kind said, of Mulaney, during our breakfast. (He was commuting between episodes of “Everybody’s Live,” in Los Angeles, and shooting “Only Murders” in New York.) At one point, a man approached him—not a fan, it turned out, but a former New Jersey firefighter, whom Kind called “my best friend here in town.” Our conversation, which has been edited and condensed, covered his father’s jewelry store, the months that he and Clooney spent as roommates, and his enduring love of “Don Quixote.”
How would you describe your job on “Everybody’s Live,” or how was it described to you?
Nothing gets described to me. I’m not kidding. I didn’t know the show got picked up until I read it in The Hollywood Reporter. Isn’t that crazy? I called John and I said, “Truly, if you don’t want to use me, I totally understand. I won’t be insulted.” And he goes, “I’d be very insulted!” How do I describe it? Well, the easy way is: I’m Ed McMahon. But I’m not. Ed McMahon’s the most famous. Andy Richter and Alan Kalter were perfect examples of what I do.
Did you study those people?
Oh, God, no. You think I worked on this thing? When I act, I have a huge ego. I want to be the best in the scene. I usually don’t get a lot to do, but, when given a moment to shine, I really want to be good. Here, I just want to serve John. I don’t care about how I come off. I’m not going to win an Emmy. It’s John’s show. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just follow along. I was trained at Second City. I’m a really good “yes, and”-er.
The thing about the show is what I call the drive home. You finish with the show, and then on the drive home you go, “Why didn’t I say this?”
That’s what the French call esprit d’escalier—the wit of the staircase.
Yes, I’ve heard that before. O.K., Gene Simmons. I know Gene Simmons from Kiss. I don’t know what he looks like, I don’t know how he talks. So John showed me the Terry Gross interview. You remember the Terry Gross interview with him?
Is that when he tells her, “If you want to welcome me with open arms, I’m afraid you’re also going to have to welcome me with open legs”?
Yeah. Disgusting. So I just did that. When they went to “fire me”—this is the esprit d’escalier—I should have said, “You want to fire me and keep that asshole Richard Kind?” And then gone, “Fuck you. Fuck Netflix,” and walked off. That would have been such a meta moment, right in John’s wheelhouse. I may have had an inkling in my head, but I didn’t do it.
John had an interesting quote about you: “I don’t see dead air enough. Everything’s so tight. I just wanted Richard and I to have an exchange that is neither electric nor has a conclusion and sit in it.” There’s a kind of awkwardness built into the show.
Absolutely. People say, “I didn’t understand that thing.” I go, “Wait five minutes. We might serve up something different.” Throw it at the refrigerator, see if it sticks. I’m not used to that. Some people let the audience come to them—just be enigmatic. Not me. I go out to them. “Love me right away!” Not in this. I don’t know how to make the audience love me. I truly don’t know what I’m doing. You think I do. I don’t. And I keep it that way. I had a line: “Oh, it’s ‘Undercover Boss.’ ” I don’t know what it means!
“Undercover Boss” is a reality show where the boss goes undercover and talks to the employees.
So they told me! I didn’t know what I was saying. John knows things. Certain people are given twenty-five hours in a day. He writes, he performs, he tours, he reads books. Who the hell knows who Metz is! I didn’t talk to one person who knew who Metz was. He introduced them as “one of my favorite bands.” Where does he get the time to listen to Metz?
What about the people who call in? Have any particular calls stood out to you?
They all stand out, and I want to talk to all of them. I want to say a lot more during the show. I keep quiet, because what John will say is smarter and better than what I’m going to say.
There was the guy who called in saying he wrote dinosaur erotica.
I had lots of questions.
You seemed really interested in the woman who lives on a cruise full time.
Oh, that was fascinating. Have you been on a cruise? All you do is eat. There’s nothing else to do! I never eat three meals a day. There you eat five. And, when you go to town, all you can do there is go, “I gotta be back on the boat. My home is leaving!” I don’t understand how they can do that. All these people fascinate me.
Were you the kind of kid who fantasized about being on a talk show, or having a talk show?
No. I shouldn’t say that—I dreamt of stardom. Part of stardom was giving autographs, being on a talk show.
