Andy Richter and Conan O’Brien are together again, though you won’t get to see them bantering on a late night couch. Instead O’Brien is producing Richter‘s latest primetime series, which seems destined to go down in history, if only for its premise. Andy Barker, P.I. casts the cherub-cheeked funnyman as a certified public accountant who falls into private investigation work. With only his accounting skills and a few sidekicks from the shopping center where he has his office, Barker must solve the cases that have plagued TV detectives for decades. Richter himself is ready for a small screen hit after working steadily doing cameos in comedies like Talladega Nights, Elf and Scary Movie 2, as well as a voice in Madagascar. But seven years since he left O’Brien‘s side, it’s time for a change, and turning action hero is certainly unexpected.
Hollywood.com: If a client wanted Andy Barker to follow a tax cheat, would that be a conflict of interest?
Andy Richter: Gosh, I wanted to tail a tax cheat. No, I think it will be an aligning of interest actually. I mean, it’s sort of killing two birds with one stone, and you can bill him twice.
HW: What does your own CPA think of this?
AR: They haven’t really said much about and I don’t even talk about it because I want to get them all riled up because I don’t want to expect to see a whole orgy of CPA activity when the show’s really more about an excuse to just hang jokes on something. So I don’t want to get them that excited about it. Mostly they get excited when they see the checks coming in.
HW: Could this show be called Andy Richter Doesn’t Control the Universe?
AR: No. It would be that Andy Richter doesn’t control anything. In fact, you know, beside from possibly his own direction while walking and even then not so well. I used think CPA P.I., you know, just make it all letters but then it’s too much like CSI.
HW: If you had to choose between being a PI or a CPA, which would you be more qualified for?
AR: A private investigator, because I don’t think it takes a lot. I guess you do have to get some sort of certification but I mean, all it takes for our man in this show is just having people pay him to do stuff.
HW: There’s a long history of comedians playing characters with their same first name but a different last name on TV. How do you feel about that?
AR: I’m easily confused. Whenever I play a character that’s not my name, I get really discombobulated. There were a number of times while we were shooting in the show where in the scene I’m supposed to come in and say to someone, “Hello, I’m Andy Barker.” And I think at least four times I said, “Hi. I’m Andy Richter.” And I didn’t even hear myself do it and was told after we were done with the take. “You actually used your own name.” That’s how in the character I am.
HW: Did you retake the scene or just dub the right name over the show?
AR: No, no. We were we going to retake them anyway. It just takes a lot to do things right.
HW: Conan O’Brien has said that he will be careful how much he uses his talk show to promote this show because it could be dishonest to do that. What are your feelings on that?
AR: Well, I hope he was lying to you, because I hope he uses the show just as an Andy Barker publicity conduit and nothing more. I just want that show to now be a mouthpiece. No, I mean, of course, it would feel gross and fake and weird, and not also just not to his make-up to really do something like that. And it’s, you know, it’s also the nature of a talk show is at its base a publicity machine, you know. And I say this to people and some people get very offended by this, but I’d like to remind myself and other people being the cynical jerk that I am that the television that we make really is the stuff between the commercials. And it is the commercials that are really the thing is propping everything up. And it’s the same thing with the talk show. It’s the publicity of the people that are on there publicizing things. And the trick of the talk show is to sort of hide that, and so it’s all part of the process of not seeming like—and I say this with the utmost respect and love and having been in it myself—the big whore that you are.
HW: Who are your favorite TV detectives?
AR: For me, it’s Kojak, Kojak, Kojak. I’ll tell you all the time. And there was a very short-lived Burt Reynolds television show, Hawk, and his interrogation procedure was to just hit people and it was really enjoyable because there was no subtlety whatsoever. If he had a question to ask someone and it didn’t matter, he would just hit them or grab them or throw them against the wall. I wasn’t really thrilled with Magnum, because I always felt that his shorts were far too short. He’s a handsome man, but those shorts were ridiculous. They were just crazy. I mean, I was far too distracted looking for some kind of slippage.
HW: What are your expectations for the show? How big do you allow yourselves to dream for the show?
AR: I don’t visualize the future very much and questions like that I always have very unsatisfactory answers for, but the most I hope is it doesn’t need to be the new Heroes or the new sensation or anything. I would like to sort of like a medium success that chugs along for four or five years and makes people happy, makes us comfortable. The main motivator for me to really desire in the success of this show is I don’t know what else to do. Given what I think I can do and what I’m good at and what people would expect for me or what I assume they expect for me, I don’t know how to do something better. I mean, this is as funny as I think we can make a show, as interesting as we can make a show and it’s accessible as we can make a show. Looking at the big runaway success comedies, there are so many whose success I applaud, and then there are so many whose success I’m absolutely baffled by. To hope for runaway success is sort of like hoping to be hit by lightning because it will either kill you or make you’re a superhero. I mean, you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s just too kind of volatile and weird, so I’m just hoping for just sort of set quiet, chugging along.
