After ‘Night Court,’ Character Actor Richard Kind Is Craving His Dramatic Turn
Comedies have always been Richard Kind‘s bread and butter. With memorable roles in shows like Spin City, Mad About You, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Other Two, and now the Night Court reboot, the 67-year-old star has long been one of the industry’s best character actors. But he tells TV Insider that he craves his chance at a dramatic turn like his Spin City co-star/longtime friend Alan Ruck, who showed his dramatic chops in the incomparable HBO series Succession.
After being “raised” on the original Night Court and long admiring John Larroquette‘s performance as Dan Fielding, Kind made his Night Court debut in Season 2 Episode 7 on Tuesday, February 13 on NBC. He plays Sy Feldman, a disgraced Broadway producer who’s in legal trouble over faulty investments in his failed shows. The character is a lot like Max Bialystok of The Producers, whom Kind played on Broadway in 2004 opposite Ruck as Leo Bloom.
“I knew he could do that. He’s so good. That was a walk in the park for him. Alan is magnificent,” Kind says of Ruck’s Emmy-nominated performance as Connor Roy. He and Ruck have been working side-by-side for decades. As he says, “I’ve known Alan for 45 years. We knew each other in Chicago. We were actors when I was in [the improvisational comedy troupe] Second City. He was on stage. We’ve gone through many, many, many, many years. I’ve seen him on stage, but you’ve never seen me do dramatic work.”
Kind craves the chance to sink his teeth into a long-running drama series like Succession. He points out that it’s not like he’s never done drama. He starred in the short-lived East New York in 2023, and he received a Tony nomination for his performance as Marcus Hoff in the 2013 Broadway revival of The Big Knife. Kind describes the character as “the most heinous, awful character ever written. A horrible, horrible character.” He seems surprised that this project didn’t lead to more dramatic roles onscreen.
“I do a lot of dramatic work, but because TV or movies really don’t want to see me do dramatic work, a lot of times it’s only limited to the stage because the bigger projects can’t take a chance on me,” Kind tells TV Insider. “They don’t know me from that. And there’s a very myopic view in Hollywood about certain actors, and I’m victim of that.”
This is no critique of comedies. “Look, I cut my teeth on single cameras,” he says of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm. He also has a long love of multi-cam sitcoms like Spin City. “My first pilot was a for camera,” he adds. “I did a show called Anything But Love. I did Mad About You. I did Spin City. They were all live, four-camera.”
Richard Kind as Sy Feldman, John Larroquette as Dan Fielding in Night Court Season 2 Episode 7 (Nicole Weingart/NBC)
“That used to be my bread and butter,” he says, but “I don’t like it as much anymore.” He explains why:
“I’m somebody who likes rehearsal. And when you go out on Friday night [to film a sitcom in front of a live studio audience], you are doing your entire arc of the show in one night. That’s what theater is. But with theater, you rehearse and you rehearse and you rehearse.”
With single-cam series, you get a few days to sit with the words from your three to four scenes you’ll film in one day. With multi-cam sitcoms like Night Court, it’s much more like theater. “They really are very different animals,” Kind adds. He recalls Spin City co-star Michael J. Fox when working for a live studio audience.
“I always say when Michael J. Fox acted, he needed the audience to give him a sense of rhythm and timing and who to play to,” Kind explains. “He just manipulated that audience, but he only played for the camera, whereas Carol Burnett played to the audience and the camera.”
“Those are masters, I can’t duplicate what they do,” the actor says. But if he had to compare his personal style to either of them, he says he’s “much more like Carol Burnett. I need the audience. I play to the audience.”
Working opposite another TV legend in Larroquette was a treat for Kind. They previously crossed paths when Kind was a guest star on The Librarians, but Night Court had them acting together for the first time. Kind’s Sy proved to be a great rival for Larroquette’s Dan, who had crossed paths once before when Dan invested in a flop musical called Camoflauge. Working with Larroquette was a memorable moment for Kind.
“I’m sitting there with this corn beef in my mouth saying the words, but there’s a percentage of my brain going, ‘You are acting with the most honored supporting actors in TV history,'” he says (Larroquette won the Emmy for Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for Night Court four years in a row in the 1980s). “A great actor, a guy who I’ve seen not only on stage, there’s a movie did called Choose Me, an Alan Rudolph movie, which is where I first knew of him, not Night Court.”
“You just go, ‘What the hell life am I leading?’ This is the dream when you’re a kid,” Kind continues. “You get out of college with every hope of making it and being a star and being a great actor. And that never happens. But having a career and saying, look who I’m rubbing noses with and acting with, it just astounds me. It still delights me. Really does.”
Night Court, Tuesdays, 8/7c, NBC
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