Hey, welcome back, everybody. It's time to bring on Michael Richards, actor, comedian, author, a brand new book. It's excellent.
Entrances and exits. His recall of his life is just phenomenal. Brings us back to his military days, his growing up days, anything but easy, as well as his Seinfeld days. If you love Seinfeld, you'll love the insight he brings. Jerry Seinfeld writes the introduction, and they just hit it off from there. Michael Richards, welcome to The Brian Kilmeade Show. Hey, hi.
Hi. I love the book. I mean, I think almost everything I didn't know, I kind of picked up it after Seinfeld. But the one thing about it is pretty clear. The chemistry we saw on television is the mutual respect you and Jerry have in real life.
How did it start? Our interest, ultimately, in making comedy. You know, that's really it.
That's the bond between the two of us. I mean, through the haha, making people laugh. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he saw me and said, I think he could play Kessler, who was at that time, the Kramer called Kessler. Right. And there you have it.
Yeah. So he brings you in for an audition and you got the sense the network really didn't want you. And later you would find out it was true. Jerry made sure you made the show. Well, he did. Yeah, he was.
He really liked what I was doing and saw me as a next door neighbor. Yeah. I mean, would you say you were natural, Michael? It just seems as though here you are in school.
You have an opportunity to do something. You took to it right away. You understood laughter. You had this natural physical comedy to it.
What was it like to have this type of success at this point in your life when you had a lot of turbulence early on? You never knew who your dad was. Your grandmother had schizophrenia. Your grandfather died when you were young. And then suddenly you have success on the stage.
Can you bring us back to that? Oh, my goodness. Well, it's a great reception to be so well received. Being an actor, being pretty good at it and delivering. Wow, careers unfolding. I'm alive. I have a vocation.
I can support myself through what I'm pretty good at doing. Oh, it was just wonderful. Brought me into my manhood. You see, it's a way of growing up, meeting my community. I'm alive. I'm with my humanity.
Hurrah. Right. And you're doing it and you're getting laughs and you had a thirst to do that. Yeah. But if I was doing a movie in your life, I can't believe what I'm witnessing.
I'm getting stressed going through it. I mean, here you are and you get picked up hitchhiking. The guy's a killer that you're with. It looks like a Bonnie and Clyde knockoff. Next thing you know, you're part of this threesome that steals a tire. You could be in jail for years in Oklahoma. I mean, I'm reading this.
I go, could this really happened? Oh, it does for everybody. It's a passage. Yeah, it's coming into my manhood as a boy, hitchhiking, being on the road, all the experiences, the adventure. When I went into the service, it was all an adventure in a sense, you know, coming into my manhood.
I didn't have a father. The service was so alive for me. The responsibilities. I was, yeah, I was a medic and that came from an experience I had in high school. My mother was a medical record librarian.
She got me a job in orderly and then during the summer doing that job in my senior year, I was an ambulance attendant. So when I was in the service and they saw this kind of experience, they sent me to medical school and I was trained as a medic and I was a damn good one. And that was a great thing to be in the service. I mean, you big guy, you didn't think you're going to be in the infantry in Vietnam, but you did have a skill and an expertise.
You also figured out that you can withdraw. You can fight through pain. You talk about being a CD. It seems like you're doing planks.
Are you describing? And there was a punishment and you just didn't quit. And this then they spotted this in you. What did you learn about yourself?
The strength and the stamina to stick with it. I learned that when I was in basic training about bucking up. I remember one time I was put in a cockroach position by a drill sergeant.
I followed up. He said, get in the cockroach position, Richard. And it was a strange position where I lay on my back and my legs are straight up, my arms are straight up and I have to hold this crazy position until I just can't do it anymore. And I break down. Well, I had a conviction that I wasn't going to break down. I was going to hold this position and he's not going to have me to die.
Cockroach to die. I held that position. And then he told me, I see finally did. And I was looking at him and he says to me, you see, and what it was, the lesson was you can buck up, you can stick in there and have the strength to get through the pain. And so when we're talking about suffering, the necessity of getting through something, not so much to defy it, but to come into a kind of consciousness so you understand what the suffering is bringing you, the message in it. And you get strong from that recognition of what the message is.
So interesting. And then you have the two, I guess it was 2006, you're on stage, you have that meltdown on stage, you write about it in your book and you said it can be traced back to your deeply rooted anger issues as well as the sexual assault that you experienced in your youth. I had no sexual assault.
My mother was sexual. Okay, my bad. Sexual assault. Yeah, we could clear that one up.
Yeah, go ahead. So tell me about that. You just laid low ever since that incident, obviously an ugly incident, you don't make excuses for it, it was wrong. But you laid low for a long time, but yet you knew you had to address it and you're doing this tour. How would you want people to interpret that today? Well, out of that great mess, there's a recognition of what it's about.
You know, that's just it. What we think is a mistake, yeah, it's a wrong, but how do we get the right out of the wrong? Again, what is it that's taking place that brings us into an understanding of why we are in that place?
Certainly an understanding of myself in the place of myself through these kinds of experiences that come about. The whole thing is here to inform us. It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at thequiz.fox and then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did. Play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at thequiz.fox.
Right. And you worked through it, but I know Jerry tried to get you out a few times, you wanted to lay low, but now are you going to come out? I mean, you don't have to accomplish anything else. You have this syndicated deal that's set you up for generations. But what do you want to do next now? Well, it's the book. I spent four years writing this book and this is a way of stepping out into my community and sharing my life. And that is the moment at hand, what this brings about. Hey, I'm in a great conversation with you. You know, it's being connected and in communication, we're talking, we're feeling each other, we're getting to know one another.
The bigness of ourselves all together on this planet, breathing the same air. I'm involved. I'm here. Hello. My book says a lot about myself.
So how do you do? I want you to relive this moment as Cosmo Kramer loses the contest. Well, where's my money? Who caved? Not me.
Not me. What are you looking at? There's a naked woman across the street. This is going to be the easiest money I've ever made in my life. I'm out. What? I'm out. I'm out of the contest. You're out?
Yeah. Well, that was fast. It was that woman across the street. You know, you better be careful, buddy. She's going to get you next. And then there were three.
What are your thoughts? Oh, man, what a great clip. All the funny. Well, the competition.
We compete. Who's going to come out on top? And oh, gosh, you know, Kramer's so real.
It's not even about who wins. It's just Kramer. There he is. He is Kramer. It's just it's funny.
I don't know. But I think it's great humor. My God. It's just so funny that you know that Larry David won an Emmy for that episode, the contest.
Right. I couldn't wait for them to describe it. And, you know, the network didn't want to do that because they were they were hung up on on the masturbation. They thought, oh, my gosh, we can't have a subject like masturbation on television. And and Larry, of course, just threatened to walk out of them.
And that's it. If you can't do that show, he's not going to write the show anymore. And they did the show and it won him an Emmy. I always get the sense. I mean, you're the you're the pressure classically trained.
You could do anything. And Jerry Sanfeld never said he was great actor. Just one of the funniest, greatest writers, best stand ups ever. And everybody else has got a lot more experience. You mentioned Jason Alexander with a photographic memory. Yes. But you didn't want to watch the show back until you started writing this book. Am I correct?
That's right. We put those shows together so fast that when I would look back at them, I always saw how they could be better. And so it just but much later in my life, putting together the book, of course, I did watch the shows every single episode with my son. And that really helped me get to the memory of putting episodes together.
What was behind it all and certainly the development of Kramer. Were you a good judge? Were you a fair judge of yourself? Were you less judgmental? You were able to appreciate how great you were judgmental. Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, I was less judgmental, far more objective. And just recognizing the greatness of this show.
My God, I'm so proud to be a part of it. And the friendships that you still have today. I mean, Jerry would take a bullet for you. He would. He has stuck up for me, you know, and he writes a great forward to this book.
I hear you. Of course, he's in the book. We get to see Jerry, everybody and their contribution to the show as a whole. Yeah, and the friendship, the friendship as a whole, how Kessler became Kramer, how Larry David, his role in this, why he didn't want to play himself. Michael Richards, unique journey through it, through the bad, the ugly and he's back. Michael, congratulations on entering entrances and exits. Oh, thank you, Brian. Thank you so much for this. Thank you for having me on. You got it. And go out and get the book you will not regret, especially during comedy where you want to be an actor or director. It really gives you inside the process. Michael Richards, thank you. And thank you so much for listening.
