Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles My next guest, you know him if you're watching this channel, he needs no introduction. Please welcome Andy Richter. Hi, Moses. Thank you for having me. We were taping, so I'm in the courtyard of Largo. So you will hear some traffic noise. I hear a lot of traffic. It sounds very- I feel like the man on the street. The last time we talked was when we were still doing the show for audiences, and you were telling me that, on the old stages, you had a place where you could just go and disappear. Have you found a place there at the Largo, where you could just completely disappear? Well, this courtyard is nice. (car engine rumbling) It's noisy, but it's nice. And I come out here when Conan is doing interviews, the Zoom interviews, because I just don't want to make... I'm certainly not going to listen to the interview because- No, it's a speaker phone conversation. Yeah, he talked to Colin Quinn today, and I heard everything that guy had to say in 1995. Enough with the Colin Quinn. I'm just kidding. (laughing) Do you know there's different races of people in New York and they came over at different times? No, I love him, but honestly, no, I stay out of there just so I don't have to worry about if I get up, or that the old seats in the theater will clank or something. 'Cause when I first started here with them, I was in there for one of them, and I just was like, "I'm too clumsy, "I should be out here just so I don't interrupt." But yeah, but also too, this place, I've known this place for a million years. I mean, and I've known everybody here for 20 plus years. So I was always very comfortable in this place, even before we started doing "The Conan Show" here. Yeah, because for people who don't know, this is the hub of essentially all comedy, where you can really work out stuff before it becomes a special, people have taped their specials there. So it is a cool spot. So the place that you've found to disappear to is the Central Courtyard? (laughing) Yes, yes. Although, you know what? I mean, it's a different thing. 'Cause I'm not here. If I need to hide in the hour that I'm here, I got real problems. I shouldn't be on television if I'm that- Right. (laughing) If I'm, yeah. If I need to hide that much. Yeah, yeah. But this is how you got roped into this show. You were just too central. You were outside, you were not smoking. And they're like, "Hey, there's this kid "that did stand up once." They asked me, and then when I found out what time it was, it was like, I just did it here. Rather than, normally I would be at home, in my sad, dark little box that I live in. But here it's, like I said, I feel like a man on the street. That is something I've noticed. I think people, when they do the show for the first time they're like, "Oh, I hope Conan likes me." Immediately I was like, I hope Andy doesn't scowl at me. 'Cause I think, and please tell me if I'm wrong, I feel like you watch stand up like comedians watch stand up. Conan's very gracious and like, "Let's keep the show on the rails, "even if you're bombing." But you, you feel like you know the mechanics of it, of like, "Uh-huh, yeah, that happened, sure." On "The Conan Show," and Conan has said this, and and God bless him. He never wanted me to be any different, but you know I will sort of laugh as a conversational lubricant. Yeah. But most of the time, I laugh when I think something's funny, which I guess is unusual. And I definitely felt when I went from New York to LA and came out here and had to go through the sitcom process of the table read and then the rehearsals and everything where everyone laughs real hard at everything over and over again. Way too hard. Yeah. Yeah, and I just feel like you're crying wolf. Like you're ultimately going to not be able to tell the difference between that's really funny and that's just okay. And I would have other writers say things to me like, "You're not a big laugher, are you?" (laughing) And I say, "Well, yeah, actually, "when things are funny." When things are funny, when you're not looking at a math equation. Yeah, and I'm not trying to be a dick I'm not trying to be a dick. But I just think I'm trying to be honest about that one part of it. And because I always have felt that this kind of job, doing a late night talk show like this, you have to be yourself. You can't, you're yourself when company's over, but you gotta be yourself. If you're going to be fake laughing, fake re-reacting, it's going to suck. You know? And I just also just don't want to do that. I think that's what I was nervous about the second time I did the show. 'Cause you guys are more front face-ting on stools there is you can see, and you know that you know all the mechanics, you know the punchline before it's coming, you know that you were not on a bus in Australia this morning. And also (laughing) to be fair to the stand-ups, a lot of times, that's the end of our day pretty much. And it's easy to zone out. Yeah. It sounds really shitty, and it probably is kind of shitty, but I guess I'm shitty. No, I think it takes some of the mystery out of it, and I think it makes people less nervous to do the show, to know that everyone's there doing a job. Just do your thing. Table reads that you brought up are something else, where it is way too hot of an audience, where it feels like they got bullied into laughing. Yes. Because it's like network people there, so everyone's like, "Haha, that's the joke that I wrote. "Everyone likes that." Have you ever bombed a table read? I have not, but I have been involved in table reads where someone gets cocky and thinks, "Oh, this is just a table read, "so I don't need to perform at my top abilities here. "I can save it," or something, I don't know. Yeah. And they get fired. You can get fired at any time. And so it's like every time they want to hear you say a line, you better say it the money way to say it. Yes. You better have all the coffee or whatever drugs making you funny. Do that because yeah, because it's the second to last audition. Yes. And I always cringe when actors will post the deadline article in "The Hollywood Reporter" of like, "Booked it!" And it's like, you are so close to getting... You could be gone. (laughing) Yes. You could be gone tomorrow, and everyone's going to be asking, "What happened to that?"