Paramount Pictures Former "Late Night with Conan O’Brien"
sidekick Andy Richter stars in "Andy Richter
Controls the Universe."
By Beverly Braga
Daily Bruin Contributor
Andy Richter isn’t an obscure comedic actor ““ most
people just never stayed up late enough to appreciate him.
If his name sounds even vaguely familiar, then it’s
usually to those night owls who watch NBC’s “Late Night
with Conan O’Brien” in the wee small hours of the
morning.
For seven years, Richter was O’Brien’s ready,
willing and able second-in-command. His duties ranged from doing
wacky skits and jokes to simply sitting on the couch and staring at
the backs of celebrity guests’ heads. Soon enough, the
sidekick was just as popular as the host. But in May 2000, Richter
left that couch to pursue an acting career.
After landing bit parts in the sequels to “Scary
Movie” and “Dr. Dolittle,” Richter is back on TV
with the sitcom “Andy Richter Controls the Universe.”
Not only does the show bear his name, but he also gets to work a
new shift: prime time.
Premiering March 19 on Fox, the office comedy set in Chicago
stars Richter as an aspiring short story writer whose day job
consists of drafting “how to” manuals for a Fortune 500
company. His character constantly thinks about how every moment of
his life could just as easily have gone another way. With an active
imagination, he shows and tells the events that could happen,
should have happened, and thankfully didn’t happen.
“I guess it is sort of like “˜Ally
McBeal,'” Richter said in a telephone interview.
“But it’s not. “˜Ally McBeal’ tends to be
““ and I don’t mean this in a bad way ““ cartoony
visual jokes, like a tongue dropping out. In our show, you’ll
actually see scenes in the fantasy sequences.”
So Richter doesn’t get digitized arrows flung into his
heart or dancing babies, but what is with the title? Is he really a
control freak?
Apparently not. The show was originally titled “Anything
Can Happen.” But creator and executive producer Victor Fresco
had never intended to stick with the name. It was more mundane than
it was catchy. It was Fox that opted to put Richter’s name in
the title, an odd move when the star was no more than a cult hit in
college dorms.
“I felt like, “˜Do that many people really know who I
am?'” Richer said. “Actually, I was afraid they
would come up with something cutesy and gross and make me cringe
for the rest of my life. So I started thinking of some of my own,
something that would be kind of snotty and that you couldn’t
take seriously.”
It was all a matter of control for Richter, however small that
amount of power would be.
“I’m the big star of the show, but God there are so
many other people that have much more power over it than I
do,” Richter said. “The title is, to me, my own ironic
inside joke with myself. As far as what I actually do control,
which at this point, is possibly my own urine stream. That’s
about it.”
A problem for Richter was that even after leaving
“Conan,” he couldn’t shake off the
“sidekick” label. He may have been working on different
projects but others would still only inquire about his former
employment. Richter admitted to wanting other aspects of his work
to be recognize, but no one was paying attention.
“I’m extremely proud of the work I did on the Conan
show and I thought that anybody that watches the show is going to
know that I don’t just sit on the couch,” Richter said.
“Then when I got out to Los Angeles I realized no one knew
that at all! They just think I’m the guy that sits on the
couch. But I helped produce the show. I wasn’t named a
producer but that was part of my job. Conan made me a partner in
the overall quality of the show.”
Eventually Richter’s patience paid off. He was given a
chance to prove that he wasn’t just some guy who sat around,
but could really act. This notion, although welcome, came as a
surprise to some studio heads.
“They would say, “˜Wow, you can really act,’
and I was kind of like, “˜Yeah, that’s why you’re
paying me,'” Richter said. “I was a little
indignant about it.”
And not only was Richter moving from one medium to another and
then back again, but he was also moving his home. For several
years, New York was the place he could hang his hat. Now he finds
himself raising a family in Southern California. After eight months
of sunshine and palm trees, he is still adjusting.
“It’s a perfectly nice place to live,” Richter
said. “But I really miss New York. There are times when
it’s hard here. We’re out by the beach. It’s very
safe and it’s very clean and sometimes it makes my wife and I
want to scream. Los Angeles can feel like a giant suburb and
basically there’s nowhere like New York.”
Even if he is a bit homesick, Richter has several things to keep
him busy. He has a new show. He has a baby son to keep him laughing
at home. He will even be on his former show again as a guest. At
this point, everything is exciting for Richter, and the changes
have been pleasant ones.
But after all that, what if he is still referred to as
“Conan’s sidekick”?
“I fully expect for the rest of my life to be known as
Conan’s sidekick,” Richter said. “And I’m
absolutely fine with that, because it’s a good
thing.”
Time to roll out the old couch.
TELEVISION: “Andy Richter Controls the
Universe” premieres on Fox on March 19 at 8:30 p.m.