Andy Richter, the affable and inscrutably funny sidekick to Conan O'Brien on NBC's increasingly successful "Late Night," will leave the show next spring, he and O'Brien said Wednesday.
Richter said he felt the time was right for him to make an effort to stake out his own career as an individual performer.
"What's happening here is the regular old entrepreneurial urge," he said. "I sort of need to take this step for my own peace of mind and my own sense of self-worth."
O'Brien announced the move at the end of Wednesday night's edition of "Late Night." The plan is for Richter to stay on through next May, completing what will be his seventh year on the show. The team defied early negative reaction to become a model for a new generation of late-night host-sidekick combinations.
Richter's decision was by every account amicable. O'Brien said: "It's very tough on both a personal level and a professional level. He's such a talented guy. But I just want Andy to be happy."
Richter said: "Our relationship is pretty good. We spend so much time together at the show, people always ask if we hang out together after the show. And we do occasionally. But if we spent more time together, I think it might start to get a little sick. My wife might start to wonder."
O'Brien said he, Richter and the show's executive producer, Jeff Ross, had known for some time that Richter would leave soon. "I think Andy came to me last March and mentioned it for the first time," O'Brien said.
He added that they had all made the decision to announce the plan now to make it easier for Richter to pursue his next career step without stirring up rumors about why he was seeking other work.
As for finding a replacement, Ross said Richter had been such an integal part of the success of "Late Night" that it would be impossible to think of merely getting someone else to do the same job.
"I think it would be insulting to Andy to go out and find somebody else to do what he's done," Ross said. "We're not going to find another Andy Richter, and we know it."
O'Brien said that the show simply did not know what it would do, but that "whatever happens, Andy is not going to leave on a Friday and then we have somebody sitting in his chair the next week."
Both men said it was likely that "Late Night" would use the next six months to develop ideas about what direction to take after Richter. "I think it just has to happen organically," Ross said. "That's pretty much the way everything happens around the show."
O'Brien said: "We have to deal with the challenge of how does the show change. It's a challenge I take very seriously. But as much as I like to coast, I think change can be a good thing."
For one thing, O'Brien said, it is likely that the show will have to retire the well-established comedy routines that feature Richter, some of which are among the most popular the show has done.
For his part, Richter said, "I'd have to say I would hate to see them do
some of those bits with anybody else."
Giving up what amounts to a guaranteed show business job with
exceptional exposure is certainly not common in television, as Richter,
32, acknowledged. "I absolutely know this is a risk. I'm getting as
comfortable as I can with the notion of giving up a steady income."
But he added, "It's not like I went to bed as a boy dreaming of being a
sidekick on a late-night television show."
Instead he dreamed of being a comedy actor. That is what he had started
to be in Los Angeles before being recruited for "Late Night" and what he
intends to pursue when he leaves it. "My goal in life is to be Ned Beatty,"
Richter said. "I want to a comedy character actor."
Toward that end, he said, he intends to begin pitching ideas for his own
prime-time comedy series. "Whatever I do is probably going to be
something in television," Richter said.
Richter more or less fell into the sidekick job after he was hired as one of
"Late Night's" first writers. In early discussions around the office with
O'Brien, he and the show's original head writer, Robert Smigel, noticed
how well the two men played off each other.
O'Brien himself was then so inexperienced as a performer that it seemed
like a sound idea to give him someone to bounce comments off. Although
the show went though some well-publicized early struggles -- and some
NBC executives were especially keen to drop Richter in the first season
-- O'Brien quickly came to realize that one of the show's strengths was
his interaction with Richter.
"I do work best as a reactor," he said.
Richter said: "We work well together because we run at different speeds.
Conan runs at a much higher rpm than I do. We balance each other out.
And we both have a profound reverence for silliness."
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
Among them are the goofy flashlight-lit "Year 2000" predictions that
O'Brien and Richter made together and, perhaps most memorably, their
staring contests. "I think we made our own chemistry on the staring
contests," O'Brien said. "I can't see doing that with anyone else. I guess
on Andy's last show we'll do a final staring contest." 