The Three Questions with Andy Richter - John Ross Bowie

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Actor John Ross Bowie joins Andy Richter to talk about being a household face, growing up in Manhattan, going from teaching to acting and more.

let's just start okay let's start podcasting okay yeah it's an exciting frontier is it though really uh it's kind of like it's's kind of like if you and I met for coffee and then we just catch up and then, but people get to eavesdrop on that. That's lovely. Yeah. Yeah. That's exciting. I am so hesitant to, to tell people I have a podcast. It's I mean, I'm on a press tour right now. You are part of it, but there is still a part of it. It's like, yeah, doing this, uh, this podcast just cause it's a, it's a, there's a big market, but we all think we have something to offer. So I'm pressing on. Yes. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I will not hide it under a bushel. That's for sure. Cause I don't actually don't have any bushels i'm out um um no i

you know i've always for me it was knowing people like jimmy pardo and and scott ackerman who are sort of true pioneers of podcast the podcast world i always felt like such a dilettante to be sort of johnny come lately into this world. What I like about yours is that it's your chance to finally lead the interview. Yeah, right. Which I find interesting without that fucking six foot eight piece of dead weight. Yeah. Well, what's your pot?

Tell me about, I mean, by the the way we're already making this pot this is the three questions uh everyone out there you should already have figured that out as i've said before we you didn't stumble upon this you had to come here it's a destination podcast um and i'm talking to john ross bowie um an old friend we've known each other for 7 000 years give or take yeah yeah yeah and um we're both still doing this for a living which is really saying something astonishing yeah yeah it's astonishing it's not nothing a lot of people our age have said fuck this i'm getting my real estate license right right um so tell me about your podcast, since we're talking podcast right here at the top of the podcast and the podcast podcast. It is called Household Faces, and it is a chance for me to interview character actors, to interview not necessarily big stars or household names, but in fact, household faces, people who you would recognize.

Right. And, but maybe you struggle to come up with their names or their credits, but you would know, you know them. A common thread through a lot of people I've been talking to is that when they're stopped on the street, people think they like, oh, do we go to school together? Did we, did we, are you, what gym do you belong to what's your what's your local starbucks and it's uh without like that instant recognition of oh that's ryan gosling right um these people live in a more of a a gray area while still working steadily have you had that same experience where people think they went to school with you or something? Yeah.

There's a thing that happens, a very specific phenomena where I will go to get a latte in a place where I've never, ever, ever been before. And the person behind the counter will be like, oh, hey, we haven't seen you in a while. And I'm like, yeah, this is a coffee bean in Alhambra. I've never set foot in here before in my life. And they're like, yeah, good to see you back. I'm like, yeah, I've been busy. I've been just having a swamp. It's nice to see you. You look good.

You look good. Ever since Phil Spector left, I don't go back to Alhambra very much. I mean, I'd swing by his place, but yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah, I get the same thing uh i mean well do you though because you were introduced by name every single night yeah now not so much but back well sort of like earlier in the conan days and then in between my two conan stints more so because now it's kind of and especially now with the show having finished on tbs and there

being a lot of attention brought up about it you know just being articles about it and stuff people know who i am more so in fact i just tweeted about yesterday uh i was standing in line at the 7-eleven getting getting my daughter some bubble gum because she got her braces off yesterday. So when I picked her up from school, I said, what do you want? I was like, you want corn on the cob? And she said, no bubble gum. So I bought her bubble gum at 7-Eleven.

And all the taffy in the kingdom for my princess. And the guy behind me was a, it was hot yesterday. The guy behind me was a meter reader for the, you know, the DWP. And he had on his belt, it was like, it was an umbrella in a sheath, like a sword and kind of like a longish umbrella, not just like a little one. And I was like, is that my guess was maybe because all the meters are sort of electronic LED now, maybe sometimes in the sunlight, you can't read them. So maybe he needs to shade them or something. I said, and I asked him, I said, what's that for? And he said, for dogs, when dogs attack, he pulls out the umbrella and puts the umbrella in a dog's face so he can just sort of keep it at bay with the umbrella. I was like, that's pretty brilliant. I don't know if my guess would have been for sprinklers going off when he's around the back of the house.

Yeah, that could be. Yeah. I mean, I would not have thought dogs, but it does make sense. Like, yeah, that's probably I mean, anything south of Rottweiler that probably handles it just fine you know yeah um but but then he said he said to me are you andy richter and i said yeah and he said like man when you took a hit of that joint with seth rogan you really hit it like a champ i was like this in front of your daughter no no she wasn't i was picking her up from school i said and i mean she would you know she she knows you know she'd have rolled with it yeah yeah but uh i was like gosh

thanks i said well you know i said actually you know and i said now that i'm older weed doesn't do me a lot of favors i said so i have to be very sparing with my usage but yeah i've had some experience and he's like i i could tell, man. Good job, man. Wow. Definitely when I did, and I did know ahead of time, Seth Rogen sort of overplayed it a little and was like, I had no idea.

It's like, yeah, because somebody, Stegma producer came to me and said, hey, how do you feel if they take out a joint and smoke it? And I was like, cool, fine, whatever. But I did know like, yeah, i better take a good hit of this i better not take an elon musk hit of this this is a you want to you want a real challenge of yes anding so well it's so funny too because it's obviously you know obviously something like that is pre-screened it is still illegal on the federal level it is right you know when when when john stewart

went on colbert and announced that um he he thinks that the wuhan uh lab leaked covet 19 the right wing was like oh my god he's such a bad boy all of a sudden he's totally like he was through this right in cbs's face and i was like i refuse to believe this was not part of the pre-interview right this was cleared with cbs legal absolutely you do not know how television works yeah yeah especially talk show host talking to talk show host actually talk show host come on it would be so rude it would just be such bad form to like spring something on somebody like that there's not a chance i mean yeah yeah but anyhow yeah that's i mean so people do recognize me as andy richter but i used to get a lot of

like did we go to school together and i after a while started to just cut to the chase and people go do i know and i and there was at least three times in my life where I went, I'm Andy Richter. I'm, you know, from the Conan show or whatever show I happen to be on for that two weeks in the interim time. And like at least three times, people were like, no, no, that's not it. Like, oh, well, then I don't know. I guess I just look like some other round faced guy, you know. Sorry. There's been a thing that has happened to me a couple of times that has happened to a few a few people far more famous than I, which is where they start their hesitant recognition with.

Hey, man, no offense, but you look like that guy from Big Bang. No, I was like, I'm taking i get that a lot fucking hell well i also would have said i mean why because it's big bang theory and they're nerds like i guess so that's really buying the premise you know i i mean okay you know or it's just like you look a lot like that that weirdly gaunt hunchback that shows up every, a couple of times a season on the big bang. I'm like, huh? Yeah,

that's safe. Yeah. I get that. I don't see it, but I do get that. Don't you play unfuckable dude on that hit show? Oh, well,

anyway, let's start at the beginning. You're a New York city boy, aren't you? You're like born and bred and you got the urine smell soaked into your skin. I really do. I really do. Yeah, I was born in Queens and then we moved into Midtown Manhattan when I was about three. And what did your folks do? And what did your folks do?

My folks were in, my mom at the time was a housewife. My dad was in the paper industry. My dad was a customer service rep for the paper company that supplied like the New York Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Oh, wow. But he was like a real like middle management, kind of low-run guy. a lot of he but he was like a real like middle management kind of low-run guy and he um was but you know what actually you know what his very first uh uh job at a college was he was a page for jack parr oh wow at studio 6a wow um he was an actual tonight show page when Parr was hosting the Tonight Show. And it was the only job he claimed to ever love. Oh, wow. But he was of that generation.

His parents were immigrants. And he was of that generation where that shit was frivolous. He just did not follow that career path. And what he did was really interesting. what he did was really interesting. He balled it up into a pulsating hot wad of resentment and stuffed it way down where words can't reach. And it never came out. I'm just kidding.

It leaked out a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It fucked up his kids. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah.

He just had the one kid, but yeah, the kid, the kid is the kids processed a lot of stuff yeah but yeah he he was in you know he was in customer service and he would say um he would say things like i'd much rather get a laugh than a sale i'm like that's awesome and i feel you but that's not your job yeah yeah your job is to get sales yeah so yeah i think he was he was a very i mean he's a huge reason why i'm doing this podcast he would he would he would you

know let me stay up and watch old movies with him and he was always like pointing out people in the corner of the screen like yes he loved bogart but over there that's elisha cook jr yeah that's anthony zerb yes yeah um yeah i uh it it is a it is unfortunate because like i have you know i have not so much my mom my mom or my dad but like i had an aunt who was even in chicago like blocks away from second city and could have so easily done that and she wasn't resentful or anything, but I just don't think that it occurred to her that that was a thing that a young woman in the mid early 60s did.

Well, doubly weird, I think, for women at that time too, because there was Joan Rivers and was joan rivers and elaine may elaine may and phyllis diller barbara harris sort of yeah um but yeah it was um it it was a very uh it was a very different time and i think it would have been like sort of implicitly discouraged for was she funny was she charming and kind of cute until the day she died pretty much um was uh and what what was your uh your is it are they scots yeah yeah they're scots so yeah are they sort of that classic Scots, like rugged and unemotional? Yeah, they're supposed to be. That is our stereotype.

We're incredibly thrifty. There is a cartoon that my dad had that was sent to him when I was born from a paper in Glasgow of a guy in full like Scots Highland regalia with the kilt and the whole nine. And he's in a waiting room of a delivery room back when men would wait out in the delivery room waiting room. And he's he he's got a cigar and there's a guy sitting down next to him. And he's like, it's a boy. Have a puff because you wouldn't give an entire cigar to someone.

And I love that cartoon because it's so dated. Yeah. Yeah. On every front. On so many levels. On so many levels. It's so, it's like a time capsule. Native garb in the city hospital.

All of it, you know? Yeah. But, but yeah, the tradition is they're very thrifty and they're very kind of terse and can be a little cold. Yeah. And my dad had a little cold. Yeah. And my dad had a little bit of that, but he was also he wasn't. Super funny, but he was witty. He had a dry, quick wit. He had good timing and he could say things in a funny way that weren't necessarily that funny, but he could deliver them pretty,

pretty capably. Don't ask me for an example. Cause again, like the things themselves were not that funny, but he had a way about him and he was a student of comedy. He had like a bunch of albums that he got me into Carlin. He got me into new heart. He got me,

I mean, the Cosby for what it's worth. But he had all these, these, these great I mean, the Cosby for what it's worth. Um, uh, but he had all these, these, these great comedy records from the sixties that he swore by. Yeah. And we'd listened to them a bunch.

And I think there was a big part of him that was, um, that was desperate to do something performative, but he never even got a chance to really articulate it. He had a great voice too. He had like a, like I have a little bit of a sibilant S, but he had a deeper voice than mine with no trace of a speech impediment

and a little bit of that clipped Celtic thing going on. So it was pretty, because both his parents had, had super thick accents. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, it was,

he was fun to listen to. Did they need to live in, Did they need to live in, uh, uh, did they need to live in Manhattan? Like, did he work in Manhattan? He did.

He worked in Manhattan. Um, he could have very capably lived in the outer boroughs. He was born in Brooklyn. Didn't want to go back there up because of some sort of weird, you can't go home again. Oh, that he was dealing with.

Where is his parents still there. His parents were on Long Island by that way. His dad was dead. And his mom was on Long Island by that point. He had, he'd been born in Brooklyn, but grown up in Nassau County. And he, no, he didn't really need to live in Manhattan. There were a lot of people at his office who took the Metro North down from Westchester. Yeah. But it's weird though, because he, he, he,

he used to work in a building near Grand Central Park Avenue South. And so, you know, pretty quick community could take the bus right across 42nd street. Yeah. And, but yeah, he,

he plopped us down right in the middle of the theater district, literally across the street from the actor's studio. Wow. And for a brief period of time, Paul Newman had an apartment on our block and you'd see him just like crossing the street to go to the actor's studio. And we had like a mix of vaguely, you know, vaguely recognizable household faces living in the neighborhood. It's a couple of blocks from Manhattan Plaza. Do you remember Manhattan Plaza from when you were in New York? Yeah. It's artist subsidized housing.

The city subsidizes it. So not just actors, but, you know, people on the crew and writers and stuff can live there. but you know people on the crew and writers and stuff can can live there um and they're kind of it's like these these kind of drab you know uh not particularly uh yeah it was all their housing projects they're they're they're nicer than i mean housing project has a uh has a a pejorative sound to it but they are right but it is but they yeah they are essentially because like i know uh uh i i mean i won't say but you know who an actress that we both know uh got one and it was it's down it's like on 23rd and 9th or 10th on the corner there's one of those kind of you know a collection of five or six identical buildings, very sort of institutional looking living. And those were for garment industry

workers. Yeah. Like those were built by the garment district. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and this friend of ours lives in one of those and the walls are literally cinder block, like, uh, you know, like a, like a grade school or something yeah or a dorm yeah yeah yeah yeah i know those buildings i know exactly what you're talking about yeah those are yeah so they're they're all it's all like lightly subsidized housing but so there were a ton of actors growing up or when i was growing up around us but a lot of them were just struggling and yeah and you know waiting tables into their 40s and um and i i just looked at that and felt like that sounds i mean this the stuff on tv looks really fun but i'm watching all these other people

i'm like watching these people try to get on tv and it looks really fucking hard and draining so i kind of backburnered it for 20 or so years yeah yeah yeah I had a neighbor who was, um, we, we lived on the same floor and our apartment was market market value and hers was, was, uh, deeply discounted because of rent control, which, you know, good for her. But she said at least four times, well, I have rent control. You can afford to pay full price your tv honey i'm stage you know like you know what i'm like she's like you can you know you can pay for my part a part of my rent like you know it's like i like socialism i mean i like denmark and stuff but i don't like the bad idea you know like as if as if like your tv i stage, which just has such the connotation of like.

Listen, you sell out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're a whore. And I am a courtesan. Exactly. Yeah.

Don't mind me while I do my E.N. Esco monologues. Right. Exactly. Can't you tell my loves are growing that is that is an interesting perspective to have on that life because yeah it's it's tough you know i mean i have a 20 year old son who's a really wonderful artist and the notion like he did not go to school for studio art because he's like i have had teachers my whole life who are fantastic artists who are just barely scraping by and he just doesn't want that you know he's like

he's not totally you know money focused he's still going to do something creative and everything but i mean i understand it you know i think it's almost kind of You know, I think it's almost kind of this sort of blissful ignorance of coming from like a small town like I did, where you're just kind of like, I don't know, I guess you can make a living at this. I see people, you know, I see people when I first came out to L.A., I'm like, look at all these houses. I mean, show business paid for a lot of these houses and not everybody's Tom Hanks or, you know, Julia Roberts. You know, some of these people are hanging lights or painting sets. You know, I think I can make a living in this. The hanging lights and painting sets are all down in the beach cities. But yeah, you're generally right.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the key thing. And I'm hesitant to play the, you know, well, I'm such a savvy urbanite, but I think if you grow up just watching the end results of TV and award shows, it will skew your perspective a little bit. have this burned in memory of, of, uh, this, this friend's dad coming up to us when we were leaving elementary school, my mom and I, and be like, can you, can you watch my kid? Um, I have a last minute audition. I can't bring him. Can you just, can you just watch him? And I'll come by it. And he was desperate. He looked like a gambler, uh, like withdrawing his last chunk of money. And it really scarred me. And, and like like i was deep into my 20s before i decided that i had tried a bunch of other jobs and wasn't very good at them so i was going to

commit to acting because i kept having that friend's dad in my head yeah and the fear behind his eyes wow wow and well and what is it i mean growing up as a little kid in New York City must be something. I mean, at the time, you don't you're not aware of its uniqueness, are you? I mean, you're not aware of like the absence of a yard or, you know, the. No, you're not. No, you're you are. You're aware of the danger, but you think that everyone is going through it. And then as I grew up and as I went, I left and went upstate New York for college. And then in my twenties, I met a lot of people from outside of New York who had moved to New York. And, um, it,

and that's when it started to hit me that like, oh yeah, I guess, I guess not everyone gets mugged when they're 12 yeah that's that's that is a unique thing and this again is you know i'm i'm 50 now so the the this is new york of the 70s and 80s um this is ford to new york city drop dead this is the cotch years this is so there there's there's crime there's um a lot of desolation my mom's gay friends are are dying one a year minimum yeah our teachers are dying wow um it was i'm hesitant to use the term because everyone's got their stuff, but there is stuff that qualifies as trauma. You know, you come home to find your house ransacked. That's fucking traumatic.

Yeah. And then you stay there that night, you know, where are you going to go? So you stay there that night after and knowing full well that somebody was sitting on your bed going through your shit earlier that day. Yeah. That's, that's traumatic. You know, it shook me up and it was years before i sort of stopped looking at it as like well this is the chip on my shoulder that makes me kind of a badass and more like no john you're kind of a

mess and yeah there might be some corollary between this and the anxiety disorder you've been diagnosed with just spitballing over here yeah yeah yeah you're not you nobody you know should just like grin and bear that that sense of violation that's a real you know that's a real mind fuck but there's i mean there's people that never get over it they know it's true it really is true but there's people there is this weirdly New Yorkie disease where like, yeah, come on, put a little hair on your chest. It's okay.

You know, we're tougher than those suburban guys. And I'm like, yeah, I don't know. It might've been nice to like live near a creek. Yeah. Go out and catch some frogs. Yeah. Barefoot. I have no idea what you people do in the suburbs.

I'm assuming it's all, it's all very, very Mark Twain. That's pretty much it.'s all very much it. OK, pretty much it. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of barefoot frog catching. We're catching catfish with our hands. I'm assuming like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so what's high school like for you? Are you I mean, what what are you sort of like? What's forming? Where are you going? What are you thinking of doing with yourself? what's forming? Where are you going? What are you thinking of doing with yourself?

You know, I had really no idea in high school at all. So I just tried to enjoy my English classes and I did, I got as close as I could to theater without getting on stage. So I did tech crew for all the musicals. So I painted Tevye's house and helped fly it from the rafters and shit like that. Right. Because that was the compromise and that seemed like doable. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't too boastful. Yeah. It wasn't boastful.

It wasn't self-aggrandizing. It's very fun. I actually, I loved doing that. I still, to this day, I get like this kind of whenever i'm on on a sound stage and i smell carpentry i get this kind of really visceral kick from being you know 15 and and working on fiddler two gentlemen in verona um it's uh it's exciting as hell um so yeah i was just you know listening to a lot of punk rock and reading a lot of books and um uh trying to get laid. It was a neat high school because it was called the Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities. And it was the most diverse high school

in New York City, which is saying something. Yeah. So it was this fascinating, you know, and I was still, you know, people kind of stuck to their groups and everything. And it was still, you know, and I was still, you know, people kind of stuck to their groups and everything. And it was still, you know, it was it was me and a couple of my my white friends having lunch. But New York City being so cramped that there was no way that you weren't eventually going to have a talk or two with the kids from the Muslim club.

with the kids from the Muslim club. And, you know, there was no, there was, you know, going to be this gorgeously humiliating moment where a Chinese kid just destroys you in a game of one-on-one. He's like, he was like,

I'm only 5'8". He was like 5'5". And he was just like fucking nailing these three pointers on me. So it was this kind of great, this great Benetton ad to go to high school in for a while there and um it was for the most part pretty harmonious it was it was just a it was sort of this weird school for

you didn't have to test to get in there but you had to apply anyway and they would take a look at your attendance and your grades and it was for for kids who were bright but like maybe weren't cut out for stuyvesant you know and maybe like couldn't didn't test that well so they were just gonna kind of try to tough it out um at a at a different place but um like for the b plus a minus kids yeah And that's, that is where I hovered. You know, I was not a terrific student. I, I was very easily distracted and, and I,

I, I suck at the sciences, but it was, it was fun. It was really neat. And it was right in Chelsea. So you could be after school, you could just wander down to the West village and,

you know, shop for records or, you know, see Joey Ramone walking down the street, stuff like that it was really yeah yeah that's great i mean and i do think too that i always felt that that the proximity that you have to people not like you the literally rubbing elbows with them is about as good a prejudice proofing as exists you know like it's really hard to dehumanize people when you have them in front of you next to you talking to you working with you you know going to school with you living next door to to you. Because so much of the stupidity of racism just comes from ignorance.

The people who are the most scared of others are the ones that never come across any others it is striking to me that the more different demographic groups you tend to run into on any given day the more likely you are to be a liberal yeah that's as polite as i can possibly yeah yeah yeah absolutely and i mean like we had our our moments and i had my own personal moments of my own like you know you know, biases that I've dealt with. And some of that was just, you know, bad experiences. Some of it with individuals. Some of it was my father's conservatism leaking into me and me, you know, ostensibly on the surface being mad at my dad, but also trying to, you know, please him and connect with him to a certain extent. But yeah, for the most part, it was a real sort of crash course in the broad scope of humanity that New York has to offer. Yeah. And so that's the thing. So my,

my stuff with New York is ambivalent. There was a lot of trauma, but there was a lot of fascinating joy too, which I guess is, you know, is you know childhood but um but would you go back would you go back if you could like if you could live wherever you wanted do you think you'd go back if i could you've been in la for a long time now i've been in la for 20 years almost yeah um if i could go back and live wherever i wanted maybe yeah yeah maybe but i still i i am very fond of it here yeah in la and i like raising my kids here i think it's got a really nice sort of like we can take them for a hike in griffith park yeah and we can get out of town in a way that we couldn't in yep new york yep um you know no one ever actually goes up to the Hudson Valley.

It's right there, but nobody actually ducks out to the Hudson Valley for the weekend. Unless they own a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and then they just go and stare at each other. God bless. You can

be on a budget in LA and still duck out to Palm Springs. I have found because people ask have asked me, like, would you ever want to live in New York City again? And that question, no matter who you are, is usually contention on like, well, if I had a giant wheelbarrow full of money, then, yes, I would. But it is it's a much it's a rough place to not be rich. You got to really, I mean, to even be, you know, like L.A. rich in New York is still that you're just normal. You're just normal. Yeah.

Especially Manhattan. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's the Joan Didion line about New York, and I think I've got it right where she says it's for the very young or the very rich. And she said that like thirty five, 40 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. It's true. So much worse. Yeah. Yeah. It's so much more that. Yeah. And they're not, you know, and nobody's building more subsidized housing for actors. No, no. That was a real bl artists no that was a real blip that was a real

blip yeah for a few minutes there we put it we put a priority on creativity and like you know they're not going to make that much money let's just build some houses for them well you look at like what happened in the 70s in that city amidst all that you know crime and desolation and the bronx is burning you also had a lot of art that came out and you had a lot of music that came out because you could afford to be a dip artist in the city at that time you know and i don't know i don't know who the bands coming out of new york are anymore the last man to really break out in new york the Strokes and all do respect they're they're decent songwriters but they're all rich kids they're all they all went to private school

yeah yeah well you and I aren't supposed to know what bands are breaking now anyway no fair enough absolutely and for all I know there's a band on the charts right now that are from New York I just don't think so yeah yeah so you go upstate to college. Where was it? Was it Ithaca College? In Ithaca. Is that a culture shock or is that? That was a culture shock to a certain extent. Yes. Because it was a very, very, very small city. I had a couple of friends from New York who were up there as well.

And we kept calling it a town and we'd be corrected and say, well, I'm in the city of Ithaca. I'm like, okay. I saw like one elevator downtown. There is a single elevator building downtown. But if it's not, I don't want to fight about it. But it was so, yeah, it was it was very, you know, it's it's it's very small and it's not particularly diverse, but it's it's a I don't know if you've ever visited up there. It's you know, it's there's Ithaca College, there's Cornell University, there's Tompkins County Community, and those three colleges are the main industry. It is a genuine college town.

Wow. And so it's very, very liberal. It is a genuine college town. Wow. And so it's very, very liberal. It is very liberal. And my freshman year there, I was 18 and I registered to vote locally. I didn't do an absentee ballot in New York. I registered to vote in Ithaca and voted for a socialist mayor who was running on a post. Wow. Because you could do that in Ithaca. Wow. Because you could do that in Ithaca. It's this crazy, like hippie enclave that is, that is, it does pretty well. It's pretty sustainable. And they do a lot to like support small businesses. And people fall. It's, you know, it's the old saying, Ithaca is gorgeous. It really is very pretty. It is very, very aesthetically pleasing. You've got, you're at the edge of the Finger Lakes.

You've got the six mile gorge going through it. People go to college there, fall in love with the place and stay put. It's wild. When you say Ithaca is gorgeous, I have not thought about that. That's a t-shirt that we used to, you know, that people used to wear when you're, and I haven't thought about that, but yeah, that's, I remember that t-shirt. Ithaca is gorgeous. I think it was actually a runner on uh on the office um because i think ed helms's character was supposed to have gone to cornell um but people really are are very fond of that town um and it was um small and public transportation stopped at midnight but that's okay nothing was open anyway yeah um there were a few adjustments i had to make um but i liked it i think it kind of slowed

me down a little bit in a good way kind of literally kind of lowered my heart rate yeah in a way just by virtue of the fact that everything was so like, I just did not feel threatened by everything around me for four years. And more personal space too, you know, you can walk somewhere and have the street to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And that was, that was wild. And there were times where you could kind of, Ithaca is on top of the South Hill and you could walk downtown and you'd be, you know, have the whole little sidewalk to yourself for a while there.

And it could be very, very peaceful, very serene. And I stayed up there one summer and it was really pretty. You could swim in the gorge and it was it was nice. Yeah, it was really good for me. But you ended up back in Manhattan, right? I mean, I did. Well, what happened was I got I, I got my English degree and I got certified to teach high school while I was up there. And I did my student teaching

Ithaca high and, um, came back and not quite sure what to do with myself. I just kind of like went where I was already sort of known. I didn't throw myself into the abyss of like, I'm just going to run out and try to get assigned into this public school system. I went back to my old high school hat in hand and the old assistant principal gave me a job. Oh, wow. And I did that English.

That's the, there's the rough. He was like, he was like, God forbid. I didn't know how to drive. Yeah. I, we did my high school. First off, that's hilarious. That's right. My high school didn't offer'd know how to drive. Yeah.

My high school first off did not offer. That's hilarious. That's right. My high school didn't offer drivers. Why would they? Yeah. My high school didn't offer drivers. We got a seminar. We got an assembly one time,

cautioning us not to drive drunk. And I was looking around to like the left and the right. And you're like, none of us have driver's license. Who is this for? Like our fucking teachers don't drive. What is going on? Yeah. I mean, I'm grateful for like our fucking teachers don't drive what is going yeah i mean i'm grateful for the hour off don't get me wrong but like what the fuck are we all doing here don't drive drunk kids none for the road is the only way like okay i don't

also if you're going to be flying a plane you should be sober too thank you space shuttle same thing yeah listen guys when you're out jet skiing what are you talking about but so so he was like listen you know english teachers grow on trees everybody who gets an english degree gets their teaching certification i was like oh shit i had not thought about it yeah no kidding um but i um but i can we we've got what's called a a there's an actual term for it it's not desperate need but it's something like that where they're like they're like you can come in and you can teach special ed and i think dude i am not certified for special ed because it doesn't matter because we have this desperate need qualification where we can sort of emergency certify you to teach special school

itself had the desperate need yeah yeah because their guy who was trained was out with prostate cancer oh wow and so i i don't mean to laugh but just it felt like teachers are just constantly getting sick at this place yeah um so we go in and i was like i mean all right let's try it you know and i'm 22 years old i'm boyish as fuck i don't have to shave every day but i do i wear a tie just to like age myself up as much as i can but i'm a fucking cherub up there. And I'm exactly at the median height for the class. And it was just very hard to command respect. And I did that for a couple months. And then they put me in,

Mr. Santino came back in remission and they put me in English as a second language. I'm also not certified for this, but they had a desperate need. So I taught ESL for a little while. And then I taught. Then they finally, for the second semester, they had two sections of English for me. You could teach two sections of 10th grade English. I'm like, great.

But the day is five classes. What are the other three? And they were like, well, we don't like to call it remedial math. So we call it consumer math. Consumer math. So we call it consumer math. Consumer math. You know, you're teaching people to make change because you're basically teaching people how to make change. That's profoundly depressing. But all right.

And, you know, I I'll try to make this as brief as I can. It's already too long. You know, kid took a swing at me. Kids just stopped showing up to class. One of my, um, a girl in the homeroom I was in charge of, um, uh, just got more and more pregnant just eventually she was gone in March. And then in May she came back with an infant and I was like, why is, why did you bring your child to school? 15 year old. Um, so it was a lot of, um, it was incredibly stressful and it was the first year of the Giuliani administration in New

York. And there were massive cuts being made at the board of education. And they came to me and said, we can't, you know, you don't have a master's you, you, we, you've got one year of seniority. We're letting everybody go. And went i was like you know what don't even apologize i'm broken i'm a fucking shell of a man i'm i've never been so tired in my life and it's true i was not that tired again until i had children wow was the last like there i had a nice little like 12 13 year break of complete exhaustion. And then when I had my first kid, I was like, yeah, Oh, what does this feel like? Oh, this is like the teaching. This is like teaching. Yeah. This is children. Children do this. Fucking children are killing me. That's what it is.

Uh, well, do you get any kind of severance or, I mean, so do you have like a little bit of cushion or are you just, what you do is I was paid through the year so you're paid through the summer basically so I had this glorious summer where every two weeks I would go to this drawer where I had all these post-dated checks and I would take them to the bank and that was fun until August and then I just started temping yeah um and just kind of tried to to find myself and you know that involved you know trying to write a novel and being in a band for a while and all sorts of things. And then it thankfully all fell apart. And my band broke up and I broke up with my girlfriend and I moved back in with my mom.

But the convenient thing is that my mom was still in the apartment in the West 40s. But the convenient thing is that my mom was still in the apartment in the West 40s. So having tried a bunch of different jobs, I was like, you know, I really should give acting a swing or else I'm always going to wonder what if. Yeah. But again, moving back home for me, this is the this is the lucky break. Moving back home means just moving to the theater district again. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Being close to it. Yeah. just moving to the theater district again.

Right, right. Yeah, yeah. Being close to it. Yeah. So you didn't have any sort of like hunches to like what was your heart's desire or some less corny phrase? No, it was my heart's desire, but I was just scared off of it.

Yeah, yeah. It was definitely my heart's desire, but it was deep down in, I mean, I imagine it's kind of like, I'm hesitant to say that it's the way gay guys feel or maybe used to feel before it was a little more accepted. But there was a sense that this is something I want to do. I'm embarrassed to tell people about it, but I'm at my wits end. I have no other prospects. I have a job writing brochures

for a consulting firm right now. I'm not good at it and I hate it. Life has me up against the wall. I have to at least try this dream of mine. And I just got incredibly lucky, incredibly fast. So many people, it is like, it's funny that, that don't want to admit that they want to be whatever it is that they really want to be. They, their fallbacks are things like yours, which was like, I'll write a novel. Like, oh yeah, that that that surefire hit, you know, that that that cash cow. Or maybe I'll be in a band like, oh, yeah, that's great. That, you know, bands always take off, you know, but but it's not just a question of stability. That was part of it, certainly. But it was also a question of like.

There is something sort of fundamentally uncool to the layman about like i want to be an actor you know forget that like it's all there's all a level of self-aggrandizement in being in a band in being a writer you know but there's still something like oh he's a novelist that's super cool yeah you know yeah he's he's a fucking bassist in a band that's super cool he's an actor that means you wait tables you know and so i think there was a little bit of that there was a little bit of of that self-consciousness of like oh that's not a cool thing to want to do yeah and also remember you're you're talking to a ton of people you know you you i've listened to the podcast and you get a lot of people who who come from comedy who are hesitant

to admit how serious they take the craft yeah because you don't want to sound like you know a douchebag yeah you're still like a rugged cool yeah all this stuff just just you know like water off a duck's back that's all everything you know all my work is just like no sweat yeah just yeah i just sort of i cool i you know i fonzied my way in exactly everyone everyone picked me up on their shoulders yeah um yeah it it is i i i mean i understand like as you're saying it i was kind of like really is that i mean, I understand. As you're saying it, I was kind of like, really? As I'm thinking about it, yeah, I mean, I have a different version of it. And even because I remember those same exact times being on the Conan show, which was like really, truly plucking me from obscurity. was like really truly plucking me from obscurity I mean I'd done a couple of acting roles but nothing to where I knew how to do anything like I you know the Conan show it was like right for TV and it was okay you know and I'd never done that before so I still had I think a bit of an imposter

syndrome and I just remember because my ex-wife sarah used she's a writer and she used to do lots of and she's an actor too um but she used to do a lot of readings and a lot of kind of luna lounge the alternative comedy scene to me which i always in word kind of yeah which coming from improv and improv in Chicago, it's not artsy. It's, you know, it's beer and pizza. People bring beers on stage. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very, it's very much. Yeah. And I mean, and there's, you know, and there's a few, you know, they try and, you know, Del Close improv is kind of esoteric. And, you know, and it was, you know, you could make Del happy by referencing Moliere and things, which I always found kind of cheap. And it's like, all right, I'll memorize some shit and say it in front of Dell and he'll be happy. But it was mostly Cubs fans, Bears fans, you know, Blackhawks fans. It was like that.

That was improv. Yeah. And so to come to New York City and to be to be you know like going downtown to these artsy places where people are doing alternative and i remember going to see sarah do a reading and it was the first time i met john hodgman and she already knew him because she'd she'd been in some things with him and he and i met him he's very sweet and very nice but it was watching that show and it may have even been at luna lounge i don't know i was watching that show feeling very like no i mean i mean i know i'm on tv and everything but these people are really cool they're like the they're

like the arts you're like they're art i'm commerce they're art and i and i just and i was as i'm watching this show it just hit me i was like oh God, they're just trying to be funny. Like that. They're trying to be funny and entertain people like that. Oh, I can do that. Like, I know what that's about. It was so, it was like such a moment of like, oh, I can relax. I can not have to feel like a, like a hayseed, you know? No, it's just funny. It's it's just you know it's just being funny and entertaining people did you ever go see um burn manhattan no i i it strikes a bell but i don't remember what it was burn manhattan was a group of chicago expats who lived in new york and they were they were positioned they didn't position themselves as the anti UCB,

but they were kind of positioned as the exterior forces. And their whole deal was they wore the Mac. They were the matching black suits as an homage to their second city roots. It was Todd's dash Rick Dunthys, Matt Higgins, a bunch of guys who had come up through. I know.

Yeah. I know. Yeah. Sure. Piven directed them. Yeah. But their whole deal was they did much more abstract. come up through second city yeah i know those guys yeah sure piven directed them yeah but their whole deal was they did much more abstract contact tracing contact um not contact tracing

yeah this pandemic um but sort of contact improv very physical very very physical and ucb would train you to be this like fucking incredible machine who operated from the nose up yeah just constantly like they said don't think but you really were you were thinking constantly and you this like fucking incredible machine who operated from the nose up. Yeah. Just constantly, like they said, don't think, but you really were, you were thinking constantly and, you know,

and, and bopping all over the place. And burn Manhattan was very in your body. And I, they don't even think they took a suggestion. Like the piano player would start playing something and they'd start rolling around. And then suddenly they were all,

you know, a moss covered rocks having a conversation with each other. And there'd be musical numbers and all sorts of crazy shit. And what we would do when I was coming up is we would try to get our feet in both worlds. So Saturday night, we would go see Burn Manhattan. And Sunday night, we would go see ASCAP at UCB with, you know, you doing monologues, you playing. People like Janine coming in to do monologues. with you doing monologues, you playing,

people like Janine coming in to do monologues. And it was very, and that was the more like, what the kind of Chicago improv you're talking about, people had the occasional beer on stage, everyone was in their street clothes. And then Burn Manhattan had, they did it in a theater, like an actual black box theater downtown. Sometimes it's Soho Rep.

And so it was like this, for us, and by us, I, people like Seth Morris, Rob Corddry, Brian Husky, the people I were, I was working with continuously, there was a real sense of, okay, we can do both of these things. You know, you can be like the kind of, uh, you know, uh, too cool for school, uh, improviser, too cool for school improviser, but you can also get really kind of pretentious and almost gothy with it as well. Yeah. And it was, it was a really good balance for us because I was so in my,

in my head when I started, I had no idea what to do with my body and I was just very stiff and awkward. And, and, you know, I would do these like movement workshops with Todd Stashwick, you know, where we're, you know, carrying each other around and awkward. And, and, you know, I would do these like movement workshops with Todd Stashwick, you know, where we're, you know, carrying each other around and shit. That was so good for me. So I, we, I spent a big time trying to like a big part of my twenties trying to strike that

balance once I decided to take this seriously. Yeah. And you, and you're living in your mom's apartment too. So you have that cushion, right? So you had a little bit of that cushion. I was helping out with the rent a little bit bit just out of sheer guilt and shame. Yeah. But and a day job still writing pamphlets or whatever. I quit that around the time I started level two with with Amy. I took Amy Poehler's level two class. And and and here's where we get mushy. There was a young lady

in that class named Jamie Denbo. I've heard of her. And I looked at her and promptly Seth Morris asked her out and I was like, wow, okay, well, that's the way things go. And they, um, they just didn't connect. And so I waited a little while and i started dating somebody and she was dating somebody and then we we ended up uh uh getting together and now we have two kids yeah so that's great that yeah yes that was that's one of the main one of the best parts of uh getting into improv is oh funny women you know like women. And also a chance for like a guy like me to be the alpha. Yeah. You know, you know,

my five foot eight scoliosis ridden ass getting up there and be like, no, me, mine. I clubhead. Yeah. Oh, that's great.

Well, didn't you, didn't you kind of manage the theater for a minute too? Weren't you less said about that? The better. Oh, okay. I did.

I was, but that was my last office. Cause you lived down the street. Cause that was their first space. theater for a minute too weren't you less said about that the better oh okay i did i was that was my last office because you lived down the street because that was their first space i sarah and i lived and that's right yeah you guys lived right there that's right we lived three doors down the street yeah for one year i managed the 22nd street theater i was fucking terrible at it i left i quit i was. I was not fired. I quit and was like, I, I, I don't know what's going on. I'm so overwhelmed by this job. The place got huge while I was there. And part of that is because I decided we should start advertising. And, um, that meant expanding our classes from like three to 15. And there's just a lot of money changing hands and i

could not keep track of it and i it was just colossally embarrassing um and i didn't i had this thing where i couldn't admit i was failing until i had already like fucking hardcore failed oh wow and this has been discussed on many a couch on both coasts. But I was just not capable of admitting that I was fucking this up royally. And then they finally took a look at the books and were like, what the fuck is going on here, John? And it all, you know, it all was just disorganized. It was just super disorganized. Yeah, it was. It was, you know, it was just really profoundly disorganized.

And I wasn't like, we would get this cash in and I'd be like, well, I should take this to the bank, but fuck it's 9. PM. And I don't want to like walk over to the bank with, you know,

$5,000 in cash on me. So I'll do it till tomorrow. It just kept piling up on me. And, and it became just this sort of thing where i was just not equipped and thank god they replaced me with um with with susan who stepped in and had worked at the theater at second city which was a far larger operation and she got everything all spreadsheeted out and she she had an embarrassing amount of my mess to clean up

oh yeah but um hey i really i mean i fucked that up royally i can only sympathize because that's a job that i would have taken and i would have been in the same boat because business and i are not friends and well i thought that like i are not i mean either but i had this sense that like well you know like what if i worked like i've been working in offices for years and all these temp jobs, what if I worked in office or something I really cared about? Yeah. And that is a noble idea. And for a little while, again, I was like, you know, I think we can afford to advertise and I think we can afford to bring on more teachers. And I did kind of move things in that direction. And then it just outran me and I was completely fucking overwhelmed. It didn't matter how fucking well outran me and I was completely fucking overwhelmed.

It didn't matter how fucking well-intentioned I was. It was just, I was imploding. Yeah. Well, what, what brought you to LA then? And I imagine you and Jamie were together.

I mean, were you married by the time you moved to LA or no, no, we were, it was clear that like we were, we were in this together, but I was just sort of um i just didn't have the stability to to um propose to her and any sort of well you know i still had my student loan

debt you know we had just started dating when things went south at the theater so i was like hi i'm incompetent but charming um and it was you you know, it was, it was, I was an investment and a risky one at that. But she wanted, she was getting pressure from her people to move out to LA. And I was now, I had been in New York for 30 years, you know, and it was all I ever knew. And most of my friends had come to New York from someplace else. So they weren't necessarily sympathetic to why anybody would want to leave because they're like, you grew up where our dreams are built. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, but like, where am I supposed to go? Yeah. Yeah. Like if we know, and I should do some sort

of like should manifest my destiny. Right. Shouldn't I like go West or something? So we moved out in the beginning of oh two and I learned to drive here in LA at the age of 30. Wow. Surrounded just me at Melrose driving school, surrounded by teenagers,

learning to drive on the teacher's Nissan Maxima. Yeah. With the double brakes. Yeah. Yeah. With the instructor brake. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and then just got really, I just got really lucky. You know, I was, I was a 30 year old new face i think which gave me if not an edge at least a novelty because like a lot of the 30 year olds are already pretty well known by all the casting directors right point you know they've been out here for anywhere from five to ten years and does ucb have a cachet with it like does that matter? Not yet. Not on the West Coast. No, they were still running out of, I don't even think they moved to the place under Christie's. I think they were still in the 22nd Street space.

Yeah. And we had enough of a clout that we could go into IO and we had sort of Amy. Amy had called ahead and said, let there's a there's a few expats who are out there can they play at io and so we we got up and we we had a team called mcmanus which was named for the the watering hole where we yeah yeah yeah ourselves in our that was the bar that was the ucb after bar it was the ucb after bar but it used to be the afterbar for the local precinct so the front half um was all cops and they very graciously seated the back to all these art to the improvisers yeah um uh it's fun for both groups though it was fun for both groups we all we all walked out

with a story yeah but um so we had like a little opportunity to perform and I got a driver's license and then I just got really lucky and booked a pilot really soon after moving here. And it went to series. And that was speechless? No, speechless was just for you. Oh, right. Of course. Of course. This was one.

Was it? It was. Well, that's the thing is that it was it was an incredible opportunity. It was like, I kind of got a pilot. We shot a single cam version and then they were like, now we want to do this in front of a studio audience. So we shot another version and I did that one as well. And then we got ordered,

picked up the series and we're going to go on after Frazier. We were called a USA. We were legal sitcom with Scott Foley, who was coming hot off of Felicity. We had the wind at our back, but we got mediocre reviews, and we were on up against the second season of American Idol.

Oh. And we just got our comically got our asses handed to us. Now, mind you, and I've made this joke before, but when I say we got our asses handed to us, this is 2002, 2003, so we had like 11 million viewers. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which nowadays is, you know, five seasons and a movie. Right. Exactly. No, the viewers that like my failures got would be smash hits now. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. If you came out right now with any Richter controls the universe numbers, you'd own television.

I know. You'd own the fucking network. They would have to buy you a jack it's a different world um but but it does better it was it was still an amazing experience and i was like the goofy paralegal who said all the really dumb shit and yeah um it was and now that you say it i do remember i do remember just and i because i didn't remember but i do i have a distinct memory of like oh look good for john like look at that look at him out there working you know i mean and i was here at that time too but i i think i just saw the promos you know and probably would bump into you here and there but yeah when you moved out 2000? We moved out here in 2000. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, I'm in the final staring contest.

I do know that. Yeah, yeah. I saw that you posted something. It is my proudest. It is still one of my top five TV milestones. Oh, good. I'm in Andy's final staring contest. And I love that you retired all that stuff when you guys moved over to TBS.

But it, yeah, I remember thinking kind of the same thing when you came out and you were like oh yeah look at him he's in a guy he's got all this cachet but he's still he's doing something with a singular vision it's it's really it's really fucking cool but yeah it was i mean it's only so much you can do that i mean you know the compromise and stuff and i mean you, and I really did. I was picky about who I chose to work with. And Andy Richter controls the universe. I did.

I, you know, they set me up on meetings with a gazillion people. And I just was like, I'm not going to do something lame. You know, I just didn't, I just don't want it to be boring and lame. And, you know, I'm not worried about looking stupid or, you know, being like being embarrassed or I don't know, but just something that was dumb. Right. And then Victor Fresco, right? Victor Fresco created that. And I mean, we were a writer. I love this stuff.

He's got a wonderful absurdist streak. Yeah. And he just he had me as a recurring in Santa Clarita diet just recently. That's right. But it was, you know, it was like, it was, you get, it was, it was shepherded by a lot of really cool, creative, executive types, mostly women. And then it got to the ring of men who were like, what? What is this? Huh?

Who's that? who were like, what? What is this? Huh? Who's that? And so, you know, we got two mid-seasons just because Gail Berman begged for it. But yeah, but then, you know, and then, and that was, that was, you know, that was two nine-episode seasons, and you get paid, as you know, you get paid piecemeal, you get paid by the episode. And then the next thing I did was Quintuplets, which a show speaking of a fraser writer did uh you know had this idea it was me and uh rebecca kreskoff played my wife and we had fun and it was really funny because the previous pilot season

i was too young to have teenagers and then literally one year later i was the father of five 15 year olds. Like something happened in that year where they, they could buy that I could be old enough to have teenagers. Well, it's so funny. I had to have kids of my own for people to finally grasp it. Oh, it's probably, yeah. His sperm works. Yeah. His dick absolutely works. We can have him play a dad. That's fine. But there was a real, like a real hesitancy in my 30s where everyone's like well he's not a grad student but he's certainly not a dad i don't know what we're gonna do with this guy and i had a kind of a spooky lull there right before i turned 40 and um where nobody was entirely

sure what to do with me at all yeah yeah but you kept i mean even after that you kept, I mean, even after that, you kept busy, right? You did a lot of guest spots. You had that, you know, I imagine that the Big Bang Theory was pretty fucking good for you. I mean, that's a good door opener. That gets you meetings with pretty much anybody in town. It got me, it allowed me a lot. Well, I mean, AUSA opened a lot of doors. Don't, I mean, here's the thing. It was a, it was a flop by any measure.

And I say that because at the end of the year, the Hollywood reporter did a thing at the end of the TV season, the Hollywood reporter had two lists of shows that they had as a reader's poll shows that their readers want to see return and shows that readers wanted to see canceled. And a USA was on neither list. Nobody cared if we lived or died. Yeah.

And yet the cache of having been even sixth on a call sheet on a network sitcom, you know, I, I, it, it jumped me to the front of a couple of lines. Yeah.

Yeah. Way where like, okay, well he will of a couple lines. Yeah. Yeah. Way where like, okay, well he will just do guest star as opposed to co-star. Right. Which is a difference of a couple grand for the listener at home and a difference in billing. Yeah.

Probably a difference in the kind of room they put you in. It, it, it afforded a few advantages regardless. i think it's funny you know people don't you've seen this people don't quite understand there is a uh there is that middle class that just applies to actors between you know the people who need a day job and the people who are movie stars yeah and i've ausa got me like right in there just boom i was able to just sit there and operate from oh i've got this weird little

commercial gig over here maybe i'm doing a campaign for jack in the box where i play breakfast or i'm over here i got this recurring gig here um and so it's it's yes big Big Bang Theory was a step up. But I have to give credit to Rich Appel and the rest of the staff over at AUSA, which stands for Assistant United States Attorney, which was one of our many hindrances, one of the because they want you to – nobody wants to spend money on someone or something that someone else hasn't already spent money on. And they can validate – anyone who would have someone above them say, why are you hiring this guy? They can say, well, over there at that show, they gave him this, you know, they paid him. They, Oh,

okay. All right. The thing I always say, it legitimizes you, you know, the thing I always say that is ugly, but is, has been proven consistently.

Right. Is that your career is like a riot. Nobody wants to be the first person to throw a rock through the department store window. Yeah. But once that first rock goes through, everyone's going to run in and grab a TV. So everyone's really hesitant to like trust,

you know, to trust the, the untested actor, the untested writer, but it takes one person to be like, nah, let's give it a shot. You know,

it's, it's P six on the call sheet. What is he going to fuck up? And, and then everyone's like well i guess it's okay come on everybody free stuff well and i've always noted the difference between and it's like you said there's the middle class it's the it's there are people that are in the door because somebody spent money on them but then the next level is people that have made money for them

you know what i mean that's a really it's a very cynical but very accurate way to put it because i you know like i have you know i had very well respected shows and and then and then you know the the sort of run of conan to sort of give me some kind of i you know comedy gravitas but i've never made anybody a shit pile of money you know what i mean so there's still you know it's like i can't people just assume that like a i'm loaded and that b i can do whatever i want yeah and i mean relative yes i'm you know, everybody that has a house is rich compared to, you know, the bulk of humanity. But like in terms of like getting things done, it kills me when I still have, you know, people throughout my life have been like, can you look at my novel? I'm like, what's, what the fuck am

I going to do with your novel? Like, what are you, I can't, I can't get a book published, you know? I mean, I probably could, but like, I would have to go to somebody and say, would you look, like, why me? I can't help your script,

let alone your fucking novel. I know. It's crazy. It's like saying, look at the, you know, I have an experimental aircraft and here's the blueprints for it.

Like, well, why are you giving it to me? What the fuck can I do? You know? Here's the downside of working on Big Bang Theory is that the three main guys, Johnny galecki jim parsons kelly cuoco had very very public salaries for the last three years of that show and everyone knew what they were making and it was a sizable

number but no one has outside of the business has done the math to understand exactly how much lower guest cast was getting yeah yeah it was quite a, quite a comfortable distance from what they were pulling down. So, you know, you'll have somebody, and I think you, you fall into the trap of arguing with people online as do I, and you'll have people who are like, all right, well, why don't you pay more taxes? You and your millions. I'm like, sorry, me and my what now bigger pardon me and my witch there's hilarious there's okay don't get me wrong i'm okay i don't worry about me yeah but don't expect me to build a school yes exactly yeah i have a retirement fund my kids have money for college but like i'm not you know i there's there's a hilarious like site and i'm sure you've

probably encountered this the uh celebrity worth site and i think mine ranges from 10 million to 15 million which is hilarious mine is obscenely wrong uh it's the same people i don't want to get too political but it is the same people who come at me with the number that is on that site yes and also have done their own research on the vaccines. I'm sorry. It's a massive fucking overlap. Yeah. No, I, well, I get it. And I get it from both sides when I, like, I just recently said something, you know, my son was looking for a studio apartment and he that some shitty landlord down by a college by, you know, in a campus neighborhood wanted six months rent up front

and people you know use that as like well you're the one that wants the eviction moratorium it's like they've been doing this for fucking years apparently but i had never encountered it but it still was like anytime i talk about money at all it's like shut up yeah shut up rich guy look you're worth 10 million dollars well you know and it's like okay i'm not but you know there's no this site written by a russian bot told me so yeah yeah so anyhow but anyway that's uh yeah it's it's still though it's it's interesting to me though that you're you know you probably you know you're doing this podcast kind of about character actors and it is true there's like i think about you know when i think about like sort of

historic analogs from of my you know with my career to the tv shows that i watched when i was a kid you know and it's the same it it's like Sam the Butcher, you know, from the Brady Bunch, all these different people that just, they never were the star of anything, but they, you know, you'd see them in everything. And then you'd see them on game shows and, you know, and it definitely is like podcasts of our time because they would get, they wouldn't get the, well, like, they'd be like one person on match game who was the number one on their particular call sheet.

But everybody else was just filling out the. Yeah. Was Fanny Flag. Yeah. You know, it was just fucking Riley. Yeah. And it was always. And it is true.

Like those people, those people probably made a nice living and they had a night and they had families and stuff. But yeah, they were that was, you know, they had they had a good job, but they were not, you know, they're they're they're not nobody's driving a yacht around. Like I don't think Sam the Butcher had a yacht. No, no. I always think there's just a few months ago. We we the actor Gregory Sierra died. Do you remember Gregory Sierra? Like a lot of people I talk about, you would know him if you saw him.

Gregory Sierra was this Latino actor who had worked on, he was Chano on Barney Miller. He was on- Oh, yeah. I know exactly who that is. Okay. He just died like three or four months ago. And I texted James Urbaniak about it because he's another big character actor nerd. We had a nice little memorial,

like a little text memorial service for Gregory Sierra, but he was one of the first guys I noticed who just, he had a very striking look, you know, like really, like a really strong chin, long hair, balding, but long hair on the sides, but made it work regardless. And would also, because it was the seventies, would play Puerto Rican israeli he was just all over like he's the greek guy you know he would just probably native american at some point you

know he probably was like god forbid he's got some sort of fucking nightmarish f troop credit you know back in the 60s but he was one of the first guys i looked at and was like oh wow who is this he keeps showing showing up. He keeps coming into my living room and I don't know who he is. And just as I was starting to put together this podcast and Ben Blacker was like, who would you like to interview? Gregory Sierra died and it made a tiny little ripple on social media. And I was like, I've got it. I know who I want to talk to. I know who the people are who I want to talk to. Um,

cause I, I wish to God I'd gotten a chance to talk to Gregory Sierra. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's been a lot of, uh, it,

there's a certain full circle quality to, uh, to this stuff. Right. Well, what, uh, what do you,

what do you, do you have any like sort of concrete plans going forward is there any sort of dream project or is it sort of just plugging along as they say i i i you know there's a while there where i really wanted a gig where i would get to do kind of funny sort of absurdist comedy that like fit our sensibility, but would also get a chance to kind of have some serious emotional moments. And then I got to do speechless for three years, which was that,

which was exactly that. And the, the better critics pointed that out, how we would kind of thread this needle between, you know, really broad absurdity and, and some actual emotional gravitas given what the show was about. And that was such a dream gig that part of me,

it's just like, I don't know what else you got, you know, I'm just kind of floating around. I'm auditioning and I've gotten a little bit of work during the pandemic, which, you know, has actually, it didn't have to be good

work but as it happens it was i would have taken fucking anything i was panicking last fall yeah really really nervous last fall um but but there's been there's been good work that's come my way on a couple streamers on a couple like critically well-received streamers and go ahead and plug them uh a terrific show called feel good for netflix starring a comic named may martin which we shot in britain in november oh cool um right after the election so it was me doing this uh incredibly interesting dark comedy all the while like and then they'd yell cut and i would have to go back to explaining the electoral college to the crew that was a whole thing yeah and then a show called um generation for hbo max um which is a uh it's a smart horny teenager show um about kids in

orange county but those those teenagers need parents. And that's where I come in. Martha Clemson is on it. Sam Trammell, J. August Richards plays my husband on it. Oh, cool. Yeah, it's a fun little, that's been a stretch too. And it's been, so yeah, the work is good. I'm getting good opportunities.

And I think some of that comes from speechless from like, Oh, he can be the dad and he can do a few different things. Right. Right. And also that show is very well loved and deservedly. So it, it, you know, it had a small, but, but devout fan base of people who really saw what we were trying to do. And it was, it was a really fun gig. It was a really fun gig. That's great. Well, what do you what do you want people to take away from your story?

Do you get do people, you know, do you get young people asking you advice? Well, I do. But you just heard my story, man. Like, what am I going to tell them? Yeah. And do a bunch of other jobs. Have a nervous breakdown. I move back in with your mom.

Does she live in Midtown Manhattan? No matter. OK. And, you know, like I really hesitated to give advice i know i know yeah but no people used to ask me and i'd say like uh first thing get a job as a talk show sidekick that's that's what worked for me yeah there have been two and more people have walked on the moon but um yeah, I, but no, honestly, the one thing I will, I will say that when I decided to become an actor,

I had tried a bunch of other things. I had tried teaching. I had tried working in an office. I had made like a little, like a paltry sprinkling of money writing for magazines a little bit. I've had a few different jobs and was not great at them. I had famously damn near managed a comedy theater into the ground. And I, I liken acting to the priesthood, not in a spiritual,

the theater is my church sense, but in the sense that if you can do anything else, you probably should. Yeah. It's a big commitment, but if the sense that if you can do anything else, you probably should. Yeah. It's a big commitment. But if you decide to commit to it, it can be amazing and wonderful. And you will get to live a bunch of lives inside your own. And, you know, yeah, it's like, yeah, the chances are slim.

But if you really want to go for it, go for it. And that's, you know, that's applicable to virtually every job that you would pay to do. You know what I mean? Like, you know, not that I would pay to do everything that I do, but like I also, I, you know, I get to have fun for a living. You know, that's ridiculous. It's, I mean, I can see why i could totally get why people resent people like me because it is like it's like yeah i just fuck around for a living and i get to meet the best people and laugh and it's it's it's awesome it's pretty it's pretty

fantastic when they let you do it yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Better than writing novels. Sorry, novelists. Who, again, we cannot help. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Well, John Bowie, thank you so much for taking the time. Andy, this was great. Good luck with the podcast.

Plug it again. Tell everybody what it is and where they can find it. It is called Household Faces. It is on the forever dog network. It is produced by, uh, me and Ben Blacker. And,

uh, our upcoming guests include, uh, Xander Berkeley, Mary Lynn rice, cub, Fred Stoller, uh,

Brooke Smith, uh, who is the girl in the hole in silence of the lambs puts the lotion in the basket. Awesome. Spend an hour with Brooke Smith, getting her story really fun. Um, who is the girl in the hole in Silence of the Lambs, puts the lotion in the basket. Awesome. Spend an hour with Brooke Smith getting her story. Really fun.

John Astin is coming up on the pod in a little while. Jim Beaver. We've got a really fun roster. Oh, Jim Beaver is great. I love Jim. Is he great? Yeah, he was on Andy Ritchie Controls the Universe. He played a convict when we had a pageant Brewster, and I were both part of a program teaching

inmates to write and jim was on that and then you know and then just you get just you know deadwood and all kinds of awesome stuff it was a great conversation because he's also he's also a student of the industry too you know he's got this encyclopedic frame of reference about, about old movies and stuff. He wrote a biography of John Garfield. Wow. Which you can do. So he's, he was a great guest.

All right. Well, thank you, John. And thank all of you out there for listening. We'll be back next week with three more questions for some other Sam. The three questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Kalitza Hayek.

The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.