What Got Into Michael Richards?

The title of this post is a rhetorical question. It does not imply that I am asking YOU or ANYONE what the answer is. Three time Emmy winning TV star Michael Richards (b. 1949) set his career on fire a couple of decades ago in a spectacular, bewildering fashion. What happened was deplorable, but I also find it fascinating, so I’m going to visit the topic.

Richards was raised by a single mother in Culver City, the part of greater-L.A. that was once home to Thomas Ince Studios, The Triangle Film Corporation, Hal Roach Studios, MGM, and Hughes Aircraft. His mom was Italian (Nardozzi); his father (who may or not have been named Richards) was not in the picture. Tall (6′ 3″) and gangly, Richards was drafted into the army during the Vietnam era, though his service was in West Germany. He began performing while stationed there, and then studied drama afterwards on the G.I. Bill, at Evergreen State College and Los Angeles Valley College. His comedy partner for a time was Ed Begley, Jr., who reports in an interview that Richards studied the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and was the funniest guy on their college campus, widely imitated by their social set.

Richards found success in show business almost immediately, with his casting on the ABC late night comedy variety series Fridays (1980-82). He was one of the stand-out cast members on the show, along with the likes of Mark Blankfield, and Larry David. It was Richards who facilitated the stunt with Andy Kaufman, where a sketch apparently broke down and the two began fighting on camera. To this day, idiots seem to continue to be duped by the gag. It was obvious to me, both then and now, that it was playacting. That is what Kaufman did. It was expected.

When Fridays went off the air, Richards remained in demand. Garry Marshall cast him in Young Doctors in Love (1982) and as the title character in the TV movie Herndon (1983). Shelley Duvall had him in several episodes of Faerie Tale Theatre and Tall Tales and Legends. He played recurring characters on St. Elsewhere and Fresno, and was a regular on the short-lived series Marblehead Manor (1987-88). He was in the movies Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) and UHF (1989), and made guest appearances on the tv series Night Court, Cheers, It’s a Living, and Hill Street Blues.

Then his big moment arrived. Richards’ old Fridays cohort Larry David hired him for the role of Kramer on Seinfeld (1989-1998) and he went from being a guy chiefly appreciated by hard-core comedy fans to an international phenomenon. Everything about the show was great, but it was Richards’ gonzo performance that catalyzed some sort of chemical reaction that turned the series into magic. Richards got laughs on how he came in and out the door, how he lit a cigar, how he answered the telephone. There were contradictory elements to his personality that were also compelling. For example he was extremely confident and at-ease with other people, always in schmooze and pitch mode. And yet, he was also jumpy, so if there was a sudden noise or something unexpectedly entered his field of vision, he would leap in terror. The beauty part was that for the most part, slapstick had gone out of fashion decades earlier. Richards (and the Seinfeld team) found a way to reinvent it, and incorporate it in a contemporary medium. One was inclined to speak of him in the same breath as you might mention Lucille Ball, say, or Danny Thomas’s spit takes. Everyone in America knew him. They might not have known the name “Michael Richards” but they certainly knew the name “Kramer”.

During the run of Seinfeld, Richards was also in several more films: Problem Child (1990), Coneheads (1993), So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Airheads (1994), Unstrung Heroes (1995), and Trial and Error (1997), in which he co-starred with Jeff Daniels.

When Seinfeld wrapped however Richards seemed to flounder a bit. In 2000, he created, produced, and starred in his own sitcom The Michael Richards Show but it lasted less than a single season. Critics rated it too similar to the Kramer character. For another project that year he went in the opposite direction by playing Mr. Micawber (the character W.C. Fields had played 65 years earlier) in a new version of Dickens’ David Copperfield. His career seemed to have stalled, but he was a multi-millionaire at that stage, it probably didn’t bother him that much.

Nevertheless, he returned to the stand-up stage. Pros who love it repeatedly do that, including Seinfeld himself, who still loves to sneak into a tiny club in the middle of nowhere sometimes and thrill the audience with a new set. But I don’t know that stand-up was ever Richards’ strong suit. He’s a superlative comic character actor, but stand-up is a different art. And I guess we have our answer as to whether stand-up was right for him, for he immolated himself while performing it in late 2006. Richards was doing a set at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, when he apparently became irritated by some noisy late-comers who happened to be people of color. The way he tried to deal with them went off the rails very quickly. He tried to make an ill-considered joke about a lynch mob teaching them a lesson. It was a failed risk that he could not walk back, and then — it was almost like something neurological was going on. He decided to double down on the direction he’d gone in, and as he sank into a hole, he kept digging himself in deeper and deeper. He went all the way to the N word very quickly, and he kept using it, so that the act seemed to have left the realm of comedy completely, and he was just yelling slurs at these audience members. It’s such an unthinkable thing, so unfathomable, that I have watched it many times, trying to trace and track how the moment evolved, how it reached that point. For of course the whole thing was captured on a cell phone, and released by TMZ three days later. It was all over the planet within hours.

On the one hand, the only thing that has ever made any sense to me is that Richards started out that night trying to be “edgy”, and then was just trusting his “comedian’s instincts” to bail him out. Perhaps he was assuming a “voice” and hoped that a flash of inspiration would save the whole thing, but he panicked and the inspiration never came. Meanwhile the audience was shouting back at him, which fed into real anger on his part. But none of that explains how he went there in the first place. Would you ever go there under ANY circumstances? Sure, a guy can have a brain fart, but where does THIS line of patter come from? Did he think it was so outrageous that no one would ever mistake it for being genuine? Was it a stunt like the Kaufman one, designed to make him go viral? It’s possible, I guess. But, like, who has THAT on tap? One honestly can’t think of any explanation but genuine racism — not mock racism, or simulated racism, or a misunderstood bit, but some dark chamber inside him, one that maybe even he didn’t know was in there. Yet in most of his appearances since then, he seems not just contrite and chastened, but almost traumatized. It’s possible he’s just as bewildered as everyone else is.

Even if there were an explanation, none would ever be sufficient. Nothing could ever walk back that moment, both because it was racist and because it was unhinged. Richards has been persona non grata in show business from that moment to this, apart from a couple of notable exceptions. Both Seinfeld and David have been there for him. Seinfeld engineered a public apology for Richards on Letterman, cast him in Bee Movie (2007), and had him on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee(2012-14). David has had him on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Richards was also cast as a regular on Kirstie Alley’s short-lived sitcom Kirstie (2013-2014). The late Alley was famously stubborn and contrarian. She was a Scientologist and a defiant Trumper, so of course she hired Richards not despite his misdeed, but on account of it.

Richards has been back on the talk show circuit as of late to hawk his 2024 memoir Entrances and Exits. Presumably it contains ruminations about that catastrophic moment that ended his career. I’m in no rush to pick it up though. What could there possibly be to say?

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.