Richard Karn Meets World

00:00:19
Speaker 1: Have either of you started reading my book? Okay, I also have not started reading my book club selection. I have Cities Crazy it is on. Well here you want to know the truth? Can I be honest with you guys?

00:00:34
Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay.

00:00:36
Speaker 1: So the day that I had to pick it, the day that we did our interview with the wonderful office ladies, I completely forgot that I was going to need to pick the book. And so right before we did the interview and I needed to say it, I like googled best books of twenty twenty five or something, and I read a list of books, saw the name of it, read the description of it, and was like, this sounds like something I would really like. I'm gonna pick it. And then we announced it and so many people were like, this book sucks. Couldn't get through it. A bunch of comments saying this book was not It's not what you think it's gonna be. It's not good, and it really scared me. Now I'm like I every time I think of picking it up, I'm like, oh no, once I start, I have to commit to the whole thing. So now I've just been afraid to start it. And then there was a puss I was like, do I do I just listen to those people and pick a new body. I guess if we.

00:01:37
Speaker 2: Don't like it, then we get to have a conversation about it.

00:01:39
Speaker 3: Detective story.

00:01:41
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be a murder like a like a murder like a thriller, like a murder mystery thriller. And I think that's still what it is. But I I don't know why. Some people just said it seemed it was very what's the word they used to describe it, Yes, something like that. Anyway, I'm a little nervous. And then anyway, so we could love it.

00:02:04
Speaker 3: You never know, you never know sometime to do, but you never know, never know.

00:02:08
Speaker 1: All right, well, anyway, we have a.

00:02:11
Speaker 3: Good six months before we do that episode.

00:02:13
Speaker 1: Let's just get a.

00:02:14
Speaker 4: Date and then we'll all do it because it will be our homework.

00:02:16
Speaker 5: Okay, I'm not going to be on an airplane where I don't like to fly reading something called death takes me.

00:02:23
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that.

00:02:24
Speaker 1: I'll read it next to you.

00:02:26
Speaker 5: Oh, just does it make it better? Let's you know, you know, our next book, we're gonna read it. We're gonna read a live the next time for when we start flying everywhere.

00:02:33
Speaker 3: I think it's a great idea. Who would you eat on this plane?

00:02:36
Speaker 4: And if so, that's a positive upplication to.

00:02:40
Speaker 3: Most of them didn't survive accomplishment. No, godikes, it's called alive.

00:02:46
Speaker 2: They stayed alive.

00:02:47
Speaker 6: I remember, I remember, I remember when writer we were shooting our video for At the End of the Boy and we were interviewing everybody, and one of the questions they asked was we asked them is if a plane went down, who would you eat first?

00:03:02
Speaker 3: And why?

00:03:02
Speaker 2: On this On the Matt.

00:03:04
Speaker 3: Lawrence said, I'll never forget Lawrence's answer.

00:03:07
Speaker 5: He said, I thought the whole point was you you were supposed to flip them over, so you didn't know who they were.

00:03:12
Speaker 1: You just grab a piece.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: I remember that.

00:03:17
Speaker 1: Did we put that in the video?

00:03:18
Speaker 2: We did?

00:03:19
Speaker 5: Why that sticks out because you're not you turn them over, so you know, you're not supposed to know who you're eating.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: We have some great answers.

00:03:24
Speaker 3: People were hysterical, Oh god, it's so funny.

00:03:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we need to we need to find some snippets from that play them for people.

00:03:32
Speaker 3: I got them, I got them all.

00:03:34
Speaker 1: I'm high as a kite right now.

00:03:36
Speaker 3: Sorry, high as a kite right now?

00:03:38
Speaker 1: What is going on?

00:03:39
Speaker 3: I'm having the house painted and there.

00:03:41
Speaker 5: I don't know what they're doing, but it's all filtering into my little room and it's like I'm in the huffing bag itself.

00:03:47
Speaker 3: My fingers are tingling like Mike. It's the best meet world. I'm Daniel Fishl, I'm right strong, and I'm will for Dill.

00:04:10
Speaker 1: When people are deciding who the face of nineties television was in activity, I'm sure many of our listeners find themselves engaged in at house parties, local concerts, and HA meetings. I'm sure the expected and most obvious names are thrown around. Jerry Seinfeld, George Clooney, Jennifer Aniston, the cat from Sabrina. But I would like to throw another name into the mix, and it's none other than our guest this week, best known as the beloved sidekick, Al Borland from The Jugger, not known as Home Improvement, one of the most recognizable faces of the decade. The co host of tool Time was the safety conscious straight man to the grunting machismo of Tim Taylor, and his contributions to the show made you feel as warm as the flannels he wore. On every episode, and he also appeared on an episode of Boy Meets World No Doubt, an unavoidable ask by the network to spike our ratings during sweeps, playing an animal control officer ready to contain Little Corey, a pig at the center of the season three episode This Little Piggy. Will he remember being in the episode or will he bleeth it? Your guess is as good as ours. He go on to host Family Feud, a gig at least two of us on this Zoom would commit a felony to Land and has popped up on everything from That seventy Show and Last Man Standing to Detroiter's and the truly Genius Penn fifteen. But yes, he hammered his way into America's heart on Home Improvement, a show that once found itself atop the Nielsen ratings, clocking in over thirty million viewers per episode, a feat now impossible unless you're part of a football team attempting to win an important trophy. He was an integral part of one of the biggest sitcoms of the decade, and now he's an integral part of a popular niche rewatch podcast of this decade. Welcome to Pod Meets World Richard carn Yes, yes, Oh my gosh, good Richard, thank you so much for being here, just like in nineteen ninety five, you are bringing some much needed star power to our show. So thank you.

00:06:23
Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety five. I can't I can't even imagine, you know. And it's so funny because in ninety five, I don't think I had done very many other TV shows.

00:06:36
Speaker 1: Just Home Improvement.

00:06:37
Speaker 2: Well, I've done Home Improvement, the just the one show that everybody was watching, the biggest show on television, just that one. And I knew that, I knew how our set works, but I wasn't sure how another set would work when I go over there. But you guys were so welcoming, so wonderful, and you know you were very young.

00:06:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we were. We were all very young. I in ninety I was fourteen, no way, yeah right then. And I would have been fourteen.

00:07:05
Speaker 2: He would have been fourteen.

00:07:06
Speaker 4: I would have been fifteen.

00:07:08
Speaker 2: That makes me about eighteen then. Yeah, yeah, I.

00:07:11
Speaker 1: Think Will was also about eighteen. I was eighteen or nineteen.

00:07:14
Speaker 3: I was the old guy at the time.

00:07:19
Speaker 1: Wow, that makes us feel good.

00:07:21
Speaker 2: It was a big year. There was a lot going on. I went back to my calendar, my old school calendar where I wrote everything down on a.

00:07:28
Speaker 1: You still have it.

00:07:30
Speaker 2: I found it. I had to go looking for it, and I found I had, like I don't know, eight nine years of those different books for each year, and I'm amazed at the stuff I was doing. You know this week, this this week that there were there were a lot of things.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: Well, knowing then how busy you were. Do you remember your week on Boy Meets World.

00:07:52
Speaker 2: I remember meeting you, guys, I vaguely remember the show, And to be honest with you, I haven't seen the show since.

00:08:00
Speaker 1: Okay, and I wasn't going.

00:08:01
Speaker 2: To watch it before this podcast because I want to be surprised.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: Too, you want to Okay, well, we're not going to watch it today, so let me refresh your memory and all of our memories. As a reminder, it is season three called the season three episode called This Little Piggy, where you play Victor, the animal control officer concerned with the presence of a pig in the Matthews home. No, it's in.

00:08:29
Speaker 4: It's apartment, but the scene it takes place in the Matthews I don't know why.

00:08:37
Speaker 2: Who ratted you out? Who told who? Totally.

00:08:42
Speaker 1: Penga did me. I know I she was first of all to Panga was the biggest animal lover. She's a vegetarian, so I know she was doing it because she thought the pig was somehow a danger. Yes, because pigs don't belong in apartments or homes. But still, Sean loved, loved this pig. I would never have let anything happen to the pig. I really, I really disagreed with Topanga that week.

00:09:07
Speaker 3: Yeah I did too.

00:09:09
Speaker 1: We definitely. One thing we all remember about the week is that working with pigs is the worst.

00:09:15
Speaker 2: Animals I do. And I have since worked with another pig.

00:09:20
Speaker 1: Were these the little squeaky ones or are they big.

00:09:22
Speaker 2: With animals with with a little pop belly? You know, that was all over the place, and he was supposed to be all over the place, So that was fun. And I've worked with a monkey, I've worked with dogs, I've worked with Tim Allen is like.

00:09:37
Speaker 1: You actually you're on your show.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: You would do lots of set pieces.

00:09:41
Speaker 4: Right like there would always be some big physical stunt or like a machinery going crazy.

00:09:49
Speaker 2: I mean, you guys were doing we went set. When we would go to a what would be considered a working job site or something like that. It was actually the ABC buildings being built on the Disney lot. Okay, so you like the animation building, like the other buildings, these were you know before when we dropped the beam on the Nomad, you know, that was the foundation of all those buildings.

00:10:14
Speaker 3: Wow, geez, you know what I remember.

00:10:17
Speaker 5: One of the things I remember most is I used to get my parking space, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. Was near Tim Allen's and he is two or three, and every single day there was like three different cars, a different car and always the coolest thing in the world, and different every single time.

00:10:34
Speaker 3: And I would just be like, what that that's that's what I want. I want that thing right there.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: Well, you know, every every car on tool Time or on Home Improvement was one of Tim's cars.

00:10:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's very similarly now on Shifting Gears. I don't know if you've watched Shifting Gears, but every single every single car is one of his cars.

00:10:54
Speaker 2: Is well, he needs another revenue stream, I know.

00:10:57
Speaker 1: Because he charges it to the production.

00:11:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course he does. That's brilliant.

00:11:07
Speaker 1: I directed an episode of Shifting Gears and.

00:11:11
Speaker 2: I thought that was fun. I bet that was a lot of fun.

00:11:13
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. But one of our guest star actors, everyone's told like, these are real cars. There's like a big meeting before the day starts. These are real cars. They are actually from the year. They are Tim Allen's property. Please do not lean, do not scratch, do not walk too close to now you know you're you're Some of the scenes are in a shop and one of one of our actors leaned all of his body weight while he was doing stuff in the engine and it dented the car. And yeah, there was there was a dent. And everyone's like, okay, we have done at a meeting.

00:11:51
Speaker 2: What are we going to do? There's a dent.

00:11:53
Speaker 1: There's a dent in the car. And one of the guys who works for Tim, who deals with the cars, came over and looked at it and he was like, oh, this is absolutely nothing. We'll be able to this out. It's going to be about seventy five dollars to fix.

00:12:02
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh over it. That came over, Yes it was. He was seventy five years old and fully jacked.

00:12:10
Speaker 1: Oh, fully jacked. I know. He's like an incredible shape.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: So is Tim.

00:12:15
Speaker 1: Though Tim is like, I don't know, it was it's it was incredible. I was like, wow, yeah, he's in such good shape.

00:12:23
Speaker 2: Well we have to be because we're.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: Older, I know, don't. We don't have the option anymore. I'm no longer fourteen. I don't know if you know this, but I'm also very old.

00:12:31
Speaker 2: In You're in my heart. You're still fortunate.

00:12:34
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. I appreciate that.

00:12:37
Speaker 3: Uh.

00:12:37
Speaker 1: We've talked a lot about the Disney lot and our little section of the stages, because we in ninety two ninety or ninety three ninety four were on the stage right next to you. We were on Stage two on the Disney lot, right next to Home Improvement, and we had a little area outside that I'm wondering if you also remember. We call it the cage, but it's we used to do our pe our recreation activity outside with all the kids.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: Well yeah, you, I mean we we had stuff for our kids. But you know, I was an adult, so I didn't really go over there and check out.

00:13:12
Speaker 1: You didn't play football with us. But do you remember do you remember seeing us running around in the cage or me coming by to visit your set to hang out with Jonathan.

00:13:21
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, I do. Yes, that was very cool. I'll tell you what there was. There was one year where I was walking around the Disney lot. I stumbled upon this this stage and I walk in and the stage has been dug out like three levels down.

00:13:43
Speaker 6: Wow.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: And there was this huge like moon service with stillag tites and stuff. It was the most amazing set. And I go in there and and I go what is this? It was the set for Armageddon, you know when they go along with the meteor. Yes, I and I go back and I go, Tim, we got to use this set. He goes, what are you talking about? Come on, come with me. We gotta go use this to and he goes over there and we walk in and he goes, yes, absolutely, And so he goes to Bob Igert or Bob Eisner, you.

00:14:16
Speaker 3: Know he's a Michael Eisner at the time, probably.

00:14:19
Speaker 2: It was Michael Eisner at the time. He goes, can we use this? And Michael Eisner was like, oh, Michael Nann's the director. I don't know. And so we had to go to the director and the director Hamden had and he wasn't like happy about this, but he goes, Okay, you can use it, but you have to bank it for three months, and after the movie has aired, after the movie has come out, you can't show anything before that, right, So they bank. We banked a scene where Tim goes next door to Wilson's house and he goes, you know, well where he goes. I'm down here, Tim, He's in his basement and you open the door to the basement and here's this giant set.

00:14:56
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I love it.

00:14:58
Speaker 2: And the irony, or the sad news, is that I didn't get to be in that scene.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: Oh you know, it was your idea. It was your idea.

00:15:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was that was grossly you know, that was mean. Yeah, we did get to use that said, and so I was glad that we did that.

00:15:16
Speaker 4: That's so cool.

00:15:18
Speaker 1: One of the ways we like to start some of our getting to know some of our guests is by asking about their origin story. I read in preparation for this meeting. I read on your Wikipedia page one of the most incredible stories about how you ended up becoming an actor. And I don't know if it's true, because my Wikipedia page used to say I was a chef, and I've never I can't. I could barely make chicken nuggets, so I know that they're not It's not always correct, But is it true that you got a citation and that's what ended up leading to you becoming an actor? And if some will you tell us the story, I'll.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: Tell you what there are. And you must know this. There are certain things in your life where when you get them, you can walk it back and you can go. You know. This led to this, which led to this, which led to that. And so when I started thinking about how how home improvement came about, everything was linked primarily back to doing summerstock in Holland, Michigan, in like nineteen eighty three.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: Okay, so how old were you in eighty three?

00:16:27
Speaker 2: Well, I had moved to New York in nineteen seventy nine, okay, and I was twenty three. Okay, So I was twenty five or six something like that, and I was doing summerstock because that's what you do. You know. I did a lot of theater before doing TV, in film or film or whatever like that. And that's where that's why I went to New York instead of California. I'm from Seattle, grew up in Seattle, and I went through the training program, a professional actor training program at the University of Washington, Okay. And at the time, the University of Washington had was part of the League of Schools, and they had auditions for us in New York and that's why I ended up up in New York, Okay.

00:17:07
Speaker 1: So you were doing theater and that's where that's why you were. You were always an actor from from the time of starting theater.

00:17:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And I went off to Holland, Michigan to do this five shows, five plays for the season in rotating rep and one of them was a was a play called Oh Gosh, Strider. It was a play with music and people played animals and hit there you go animals again. And I worked with this director who happened to be the director of theater at Evansville College in Indiana, and he had done this play earlier in the year and he was trying to direct this play kind of like he had already done. And all of a sudden, I'm caught between I don't know what he why would you want me to do that? It had nothing to do with my you know what I was thinking, And he's going, well, you know, we did this and wait, you did this already. I go, yeah, we've we Well, I'm not going to do what some other guy did. I mean, I feel like this is this is where my trajectory's going. And you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah. And we kind of, you know, we really butted heads a lot during rehearsal until opening night. And then opening night everything worked. You know, my stuff worked, his stuff worked, everything worked, and he was like really happy and we became friends after that. And then a few years later he calls for me and goes, you know, there's a playwrights conference in New Harmony, Indiana, and we need actors to read the scripts while the while the playwrights rewrite them and dramatics help them rewrite them, kind of like you know, after your Monday table read, you go. You writers go back and they rewrite and puff up jokes or restructure the you know, the A story, the B story, whatever. And he said, we can pay you one hundred dollars a week, but we'll put you up. We'll you know, we'll feed you, we'll put you up. And I'm living in New York at the time, and I go, one hundred dollars a week. Huh okay, h yes, you know that was that was my response at that point in my life was yes to everything, because you don't know what. Yeah, you don't know what. So I go down there and I meet these guys, Matt Williams, David mcfadzyan, and Carmen Finestra, and they had just come off the first season of Roseanne, okay, and they were they were fired. They were fired by Roseanne for telling her not to be mean to John Goodman. And she's going, well, this is my this is what I do, this is my gig. I go, well, America loves John Goodman. They're not going to like you. She fired them, and then she she took her advice. But so I'm meeting these guys and I, you know, I don't know how TV works or whatever, and I, you know, I cohersed them into writing a skit for the end of the two weeks of all these funny rectors, writers, actors, and we do this amazing skit and we're up till like two three o'clock in the morning writing the stuff. And if I had any idea of what these guys had gone through and what they go through, you know, doing a half hour TV sitcom every week where they you know, they're up to two and three o'clock in the morning. This is their vacation. And I'm making that, you know what I mean, like this is always And we did, we had we had a great time. I stayed in touch with them when I when I finally moved to California a few years later, I called them up and they were doing a show called Carolyn Company with Carol Burnette and they said, well, you know, there's there might be something and they and a few weeks later they call me and go, well, there's this little role we have. You know, Carolyn Company had a group of actors, you know, an ensemble of actors. Richard Kind was one of them. They had like five or six ensembles. But this was like a smaller role that the ensemble didn't care about or whatever. So I went and I did my few lines with Carol Burnett and I'm going, wow, this is this is the big time. This is pretty cool. And you know, we did the curtain call at the end of the show on Friday night and I'm holding Carol Burnett's hand, I'm going, wow, thank you guys. Thank you. And and then a year later, yes, I get a traffic citation.

00:21:21
Speaker 1: Driving around Los Angeles.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: I am doing a production of and you know, I'm not in a theater, but I still don't like to say it. I'm doing the Scottish Play in Shakespeare's Scottish Play, which has a lot of bad jujuka associated with it. I mean, you can read books on people who have died, who have gotten deathly sick, who have had accidents. There are stuff going on in that play because there apparently are real witch incantations associated with that play, The Three Witches.

00:21:57
Speaker 3: Cool.

00:21:57
Speaker 2: So I've finished rehearsal, I'm driving home and I'm like, you know, I'm on side streets and I you know, I know there's a stop sign, but then you know, my peripheral I see there's nothing going on. It's a side street, and I kind of roll through it. And the next thing I know, there's a cop behind me, Like, oh, oh god, I'm doing this play. This is my bad luck.

00:22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, here it is it.

00:22:19
Speaker 2: I've you know, and I get a traffic ticket. And back then you couldn't do it online. There was no online to go to traffic school, which is an eight hour.

00:22:30
Speaker 1: School, yep, all day, and I sat next.

00:22:33
Speaker 2: To this woman who turned out to be an agent at the Girsch Agency, and we're talking, you know, we're talking about, oh who we know? You know, well, I did this thing with these guys. You know Matt Williams. Go, oh, yeah, we know Matt Williams. He's in fact, he's he's doing a new show right now. They're casting a new show called Home Improvement with this comic named Tim Melan. I go, well, I don't think so. I think they would have called me. Yeah, I'm talking to her. I'm not trying to get an age without trying to get an agent. But any I don't have an agent at this point. I'm doing a play. I'm just you know, in LA And I call up David. I go, David, I hear you guys are are auditioning for this new show. He goes, Rick, were there's nothing for you in this show. We know you. You're too much like Tim Allen. You're too much lik him. You're the same size, you're roughly the same age. You're just we needed somebody, you know, a little different, and we've already cast Stephen Tobolowski. You know, a life insurance salesman. And so he goes, but anyway, you know, you don't know our casting director, you know, So come in and meet Deborah Brolski and I go, great, I thank you. I would love that. And so they send me the scene, which is, you know the character of Glenn, Tim's assistant, Glenn doing this thing with a lathe. And I ask a friend, you know, can you kind of help me work on this. I never really had done that before, worked on an audition scene that intensely. And we worked it out and I go, oh, you know what, I'm working with the lathe. I think I'll make noises, you know, I'll go you know, you know when you're work with, when you work with Yah, you know, I did all this kind of stuff. And I go in and there's Matt David Carmen. I know those guys. John passed when the director I'd been a reader for him for the Arena stage ten years earlier in New York. The only person in the room I didn't know was Deborah Brosky and I, you know, this is a scene they've seen a million times, it's already cast. They don't care, but they laugh. They you know, I'm doing this scene, they're laughing. I'm going I'm doing my job. And then John goes, can you make the lathes sound like a question? And I go, yes, I can because I have, you know, professional actor training, and so in my head I'm going, Okay, the lady's got a question. So I goes, you know when you work, when you're like that, and they were like falling on the ground. I have no idea. It wasn't that funny, but it was funny. But until later, when you know, I hear Tim and his grunts and his and then he has the yeah, good question. They were just you know, playing with me. They were screwing around. But I did it and they call me like three weeks later, and Carmen actually calls me. And I don't know if you know Carmen Finestra. He's about five one, five to two, he's he's he's and funniest guy. I mean, he worked on the Cosby Show, he worked on with Steve Marty's worked all these shows. And he calls me. He goes, so, Rick, do you still have that beard? And I had grown a beard for the Scottish play and I go yeah. I go, well, it seems that Steven is doing a play in New York and he can't do the pilot, and we were wondering if you could, yes, man, let him get it out. I go, yes, I can do that. He goes, well, now if the show gets picked up, we would still bring Steven in. And I go, I don't care. I don't have a I don't have a pilot on my resume. I you know, I've never done anything like that. I would love to do that, thank you. And the corner where I got that traffic ticket is where that agent lived. And the woman who played Lady M her husband was was comedy liaison at ABC. My god, there were always little, these little satellites around this job that. And I'm doing the job and we have ten days rehearsal, and the whole time, I'm going, God, this is so, this is this is gonna be a great show. It hasn't aired. You know, the audience is laving that hasn't aired, but I'm going, oh God, I wish I could be part of the Okay, but anyway, I get to do this and this is very cool. And I don't know if you knew this, but they changed the lead actress three days into rehearsals.

00:27:14
Speaker 1: No, I did not know that. So it wasn't Patricia's.

00:27:18
Speaker 2: It was and Im. And I'm blanking on her name right now. She was the mother in.

00:27:24
Speaker 1: Titanic, Francis Fisher.

00:27:26
Speaker 2: Francis Fisher, and that's why the boys are blonde, because Francis was a strawberry blonde.

00:27:31
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And so three days into rehearsal, or three days before shooting. So a week into rehearsal.

00:27:37
Speaker 2: Three days into rehearsal, we still had seven more days. Oh, and we have this little audience. They bring in an audience of, like, I don't know, fifteen people to watch a run through. And the next day Francis is gone. And this freaks me out as an actor. I'm going, are we that disposables? And I go to Karmen and go, Karmen, what just happened? What just happened? And I felt like I could do that because I'm going to be gone in a week. Doesn't I go, Carmen, you just fired. She's really good? He goes. I know she's good, but she wasn't getting the right laugh. I go, but she's an actress, she can get that laugh. All you just have to tell her, but no, no, it's something deeper than that. There's there's a scene. There's this scene where Tim is, uh, you know, the dishwasher that was the pilot. The dishwasher isn't cleaning well enough, and so he soups up the dishwasher. And so when Francis goes, you know, I'm going out to the store, don't touch the dishwasher. And there was a laugh, but it was like it was it was a laugh like, oh, yeah, you better not touch the dishwall, right, and and Carmen goes, it wasn't the right kind of laugh, and I go, really you know this? I go and he goes, yes, I know this, And they bring Pat in and when she does that line with the next audience we have don't touch the dishwasher, they yeah.

00:29:05
Speaker 4: You're going to do that.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: This is going to be so great. It was it was like she was his equal. It wasn't a victim to Tim. She was his equal. And that's why it worked. Wow. Yeah, But you know, as a young actor, I couldn't have seen that. I didn't know what that meant, you know, but they they had, you know, they had time in this business to realize those kind of things.

00:29:30
Speaker 1: But those are the moments that I think of when I think of the biggest acting lessons of my career have all been watching someone else go through something like a director working with another actor and being like, oh, look the way they're doing that, and that they're giving that note, then watching the tweaks they make, and then you're able to.

00:29:53
Speaker 2: Like giving them a line reading.

00:29:55
Speaker 7: Yes.

00:29:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a delicate balance.

00:29:57
Speaker 2: It's a very delicate balance. Yeah it is.

00:30:00
Speaker 1: So wait then how long?

00:30:01
Speaker 3: So you finished the pilot?

00:30:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know it's going to be amazing.

00:30:05
Speaker 2: Oh, it's amazing, it's hysterically amazing.

00:30:08
Speaker 3: But you also are told you're not going to be part of the show moving forward.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: Get it? Yeah, when do you find out?

00:30:13
Speaker 2: I go back. You know, I'm I'm the apartment manager at my building, oddly enough because I get free rent.

00:30:20
Speaker 1: Right, great, But you know, I don't think about this.

00:30:26
Speaker 2: Twenty years down the line, all of a sudden, I think I find of, go, huh, I'm getting paid nine hundred dollars a month to be the apartment manager. Well that was a pretty good deal for them.

00:30:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're retroactively pissed.

00:30:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I go back to my job and my auditions and this and that, and I go, god, you know, and now it's on my resume. I actually I call up the agent. I go, hey, I did the pilot for Home Improvement, thank you very much for telling me about that, and do you think you'd like to work with me? And go, well, you know, we have a lot of people like you. We have a lot of your type. And I don't think it's you know, it's it's not it's not you. It's us.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: Right, it's not you.

00:31:09
Speaker 2: It's not you, it's us. We have a lot like you. And I go okay, right, But like a month later or so, this, you know, we did. We rehearsed this in April, and I think they started up the show sometime in July, late July, late mid July. And I get another call and they go, Rick, apparently Stephen took another job and he can't do maybe the first two or three episodes. And I go, great, I'm there, no problem. I am so there. And I show up and I'm a guest star. I'm not you know, I'm just a guest star. And they everything is kind of like written down. There's no you know, there's no exploratory part of who this, who this guy is, who this is? Because I'm not going to be there for very long. So all of my early first few episodes was really just kind of you know, listening body language, reacting to Tim not doing a lot. But the audience was getting it. The audience was laughing at our kind of subliminal relationship going on there. And there came a point third episode maybe or something like that, where Tim had had this joke and I think it was something like, hey, al yeah, you think they call it molding because it's been a the refrigerator too long, you know. And I'm just there to let Tim have that laugh, you know, So I let the audience laugh. You know, I don't do anything. I just I just relaxed my face. I don't do anything. And then I'm about to say my line, my retort line, which was nothing really and before I say that, the audience laughs again, and I go, oh, no, I wasn't milking that. I didn't mean to melk that. But that's a nice laugh. That's a really that's a relationships laugh, you know. And then I went, I don't think so Tim and Mack got a big laugh, and all day long, the writers would walk by me and go, you did yourself a favor there. So I had like three lines and I go, yeah, thank you, thank you. That felt good, you know. And the audience hasn't seen the show yet, it hasn't hired, so all of these things are happening because it's funny. And that's the audience knew who we were before we knew who we were. And the writers were watching that, watching them watch us, and all of a sudden it just clicked for them. They went, you know what this is. This is working. Yeah, this is working. We do you know, I'm sorry, Steven, but we we found this and and you know, later on when I cognizantly the thing back on on. You know, the early stuff was like I got to help create the character without having to be placed into a character that was already written.

00:34:03
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:34:04
Speaker 2: So they were watching the audience watch us, they were watching me. I was doing stuff. I did what they did they did, you know, they played off mine what I was doing, and you know, it was like it was the best of all worlds. It's the best way to do it.

00:34:19
Speaker 4: I mean that's yeah, workshopping basically, right, like workshopping account I was workshopped that's so.

00:34:24
Speaker 1: Great, so fun, and all the pressure was off because you didn't think you had the job. You thought, there's no there's no chance this is mine. It's I didn't have to.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: Go through the gauntlet of a network. I didn't have to go through the network auditions where they look at you and go, oh, he's not tall, I don't know his face doesn't work with the Canada well whatever it is that you know, the network would say. I didn't have to do any of that. I was just I was already there. Wow.

00:34:51
Speaker 1: Unbelievable. And of course Steven Tablowski has gone on to also have an incredible career there working.

00:34:56
Speaker 2: I never ever I ran into a met arts DELI did you I did, And I went up to it and I go excuse me, and I didn't know what to say. Mister Dolblowska is. I just said excuse me and he looks up and he goes, oh my god, oh.

00:35:12
Speaker 1: Job.

00:35:13
Speaker 2: Believe I didn't take that job, And I thank you for that.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: I so great. I worked with him on Lopez Versus Lopez. I got to direct him on that show, and man, is he ever just the nicest, funniest.

00:35:28
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's really funny. He's really funny.

00:35:30
Speaker 2: Well, he would have been funny. It would have been a very.

00:35:31
Speaker 5: Different show, totally different, way different, the way different.

00:35:34
Speaker 1: You know, everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

00:35:37
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, So the.

00:35:39
Speaker 1: Show remained in the Nielsen top ten for six straight years, and in its third season, it was the number one show in America, averaging thirty four point one million viewers. No, I mean a number that's truly laughable now, considering you're lucky to get you know, three million.

00:35:58
Speaker 2: You know, we were up against Seinfelder in the first season. Really, they moved Seinfeld. They moved them to Thursday night and created musty Thursday Night TV. Yeah right, right. We stayed on Tuesdays or Wednesdays whenever we were.

00:36:12
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, you owned that night. I mean that was Improvement at Night. Yeah, definitely.

00:36:16
Speaker 2: But later they put Fraser up against us. Oh okay, you know why they would do that. I don't know.

00:36:22
Speaker 1: It's just they make they make when networks make weird decisions sometimes. Yeah. So, how does life change for you?

00:36:28
Speaker 3: Then?

00:36:29
Speaker 1: In that after that first season of Home Improvement, are you just recognized everywhere you go? How does life change?

00:36:37
Speaker 2: It's like a snowball. It just gets bigger and bigger. Well, like I said, I was an apartment manager and into into you know the show has aired, and I get a phone call one night and then you know, our our kitchen sink is stopped up. Can you come take a look at it? And I go down there and there's like fifteen people in their apartment and going you see el Borland's our apartment manager. And I just looked at it. I went, oh my god, I don't need this job anymore. I can get another.

00:37:12
Speaker 1: I can give up this nine hundred dollars a month.

00:37:14
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I can pay for rent now. And my son was born the first season. Cooper was born in March of our first season.

00:37:22
Speaker 3: Oh and that was what year was the first season?

00:37:25
Speaker 2: Was it ninety Well we did the pilot in ninety one, but it was ninety one ninety two season.

00:37:31
Speaker 3: Okay, gotcha.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: And so March of ninety two, your son.

00:37:33
Speaker 2: March of ninety two. Cooper marched fourth on March.

00:37:52
Speaker 5: So I have I have a quick story for you. It's I don't know if you're if you have any of these in your life, but there are moments in your life that stick with you because when you think about them, you get embarrassed all over again.

00:38:11
Speaker 2: Yeah you go, oh my god, I hope no one's looking at me.

00:38:14
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you you were one of mine.

00:38:17
Speaker 5: You are so uh the first so as you remember ABC, the coolest things is they would have the opening party every year and they would like send us all there the party be some cool place. And the first year I think I went, it was at the Librea tar Pits, and it was like the coolest thing in the world. And I was new to Hollywood.

00:38:38
Speaker 3: I just got in here. We just gotten boy Mes World. It hadn't aired yet, its just shooting.

00:38:42
Speaker 5: I was a huge home improvement fan and I at one point I'm talking to somebody and I look over and you're standing there, and so I'm seventeen, I think at the time, and I just stare at you in such a creepy way and for so long that eventually you look at me and walk over and extend your hand to introduce yourself, because I was just the creepy kid staring at you. And to this day, every time I think about it, I still get retroactively embarrassed for myself and how nice you were to walk over that It was a good fifteen to me, just staring and it was, hey, kids, stop staring to where you left your conversation to walk over to shake my hand in such a nice way. But I know the subtext was if I don't do this, this creep is going to follow me home.

00:39:30
Speaker 7: Yes, so, oh my god, still embarrassed, but so thank you for taking the time to at least come over and shake a seventeen year old kid's hand who was wide eyed and just staring at you from across the room.

00:39:43
Speaker 3: So I appreciate it.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: And you guys know the process of accumulating celebritiness or recognizability. And you know, I realized early on that you know, you either have to be okay with this or you're gonna be upset all the time.

00:40:01
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, you know.

00:40:03
Speaker 2: And I'm I don't want to be upset all the time totally. You know, I'm wanting other people, you know, uh, have fights or or you know, punch out a camera man or something that and like, wow, you know, just just own up, just you.

00:40:16
Speaker 3: Know, be nice, Go do something else.

00:40:19
Speaker 5: If this, if you're gonna be if you're gonna be mean to your own fans, go pick another job.

00:40:24
Speaker 3: Go do something else.

00:40:24
Speaker 2: Well, when I did theater, you know, and I'd go off to Actors Theater Louisville or Players Theater and Columbus where people would come up to me and they say, oh, we saw the play last week. It was really fun, you know, and they'd be like maybe one two people. And then it just started to accumulate more and more and I and at first I was a little embarrassed about it by it. I'm you know, I'm not worthy. I don't you know, I'm I'm in my little bubble, my little you know. We're on the show, and we were rehearsed, and we're doing our job and and people are all of a sudden watching us with their families, and it's becoming more than just us. It's becoming it's becomeing their you know, their childhood, their memory of a simpler time where they sat with their grandparents or their parents or brothers and sisters. And that's what it is now. It's not it's not me, it's their memory of our show.

00:41:17
Speaker 1: In the off season. Would you ever shave just to be able to not be as recognizable?

00:41:24
Speaker 2: I didn't know. And this is why it was, because I was getting commercials and I was like, of the mind Cooper's just born college, I'm going to do these commercials. And I go and if I do these commercials, you know, most major emotion pictures might be out of the I'm okay with that, you know. I make this decision like I'm okay without having to be Tom Cruise like I would be Cruise. You know. I made this decision, and I had like major companies. You know. I represented a garage door company. I represented Orchard Support that was big, yeah, and you know, and they needed me to look like me now on the business side of the of the thing. Disney equated that with them giving me a raise, Like we don't need to give you a raise because we're letting you do commercials.

00:42:32
Speaker 3: Yo, that's so Disney.

00:42:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. I mean I eventually got a raise, and you know, I didn't get my likeness back in a plaid shirt till the final season.

00:42:48
Speaker 1: They allowed you weren't allowed to wear a plaid shirt.

00:42:52
Speaker 2: Well, I had to get permission. Wow, Yeah, that's the.

00:42:57
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I still don't have my likeness.

00:43:00
Speaker 5: So I uh, none of us do I know?

00:43:04
Speaker 1: Perfect that's what we get?

00:43:07
Speaker 2: Are you guys? Worried about AI. Can they Can they just do that? Or do you have some some authority over that?

00:43:13
Speaker 1: No, you're probably right. I think I think my actual contact my contract, I did get that. I got a I got my original contract, and it says that they own my likeness in on any planet, in any universe.

00:43:25
Speaker 3: Any university.

00:43:26
Speaker 1: Yeah literally beyond. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's good with those tie it all together.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I wasn't a talk show I mean a game show host.

00:43:39
Speaker 1: So Will and I would commit a felony to have had your job that.

00:43:44
Speaker 5: Oh man, two seconds, Danielle and I have to host some sort of a game show?

00:43:49
Speaker 1: Yes, oh my gosh, what is that experience?

00:43:51
Speaker 2: Like? I you know, I kind of turned it down at first, why because it was so in that field. It was like a game show. I'm an Antley Feud, I know, I know. But this is the thing I had. I had done a pilot of to tell the Truth as one of the panelists, you know, with Paula Pattone and me and two other you know, I can't think of their names, but and John O'Hurley was the host. They were they were really bringing out to tell the truth. And I did that, and the pilot got picked up. The show got picked up, and they asked me if I'd like to continue with it, and I went, now, I don't think I want to do a game show. And then a year later they called me and said, would you like to host Family Feud? And I go wow, really gosh, And I'm like, I'm doing something for Orchard Hardware up near San Francisco, somewhere yet up there, and I'm in a bar and I turned to this person next to me at the bar and I go, hey, how you doing. They go, oh my god, you're Richard Carr. I go, yeah, what would you think if I did a game show? And they went, well, nah, you don't want to do that, you know, just some random person, right. They go, yeah, you're right.

00:45:03
Speaker 1: I think I don't want to do that.

00:45:05
Speaker 2: You're right, you know. And I go back and I say no, I don't like and then it's like they all it's not like they ganged up on me, but they all went, well, you know, you've been doing family TV, you did family movies. This is just another family venue you can do, which might be a lot of fun. And I'm and I'm thinking, uh, yeah, okay, all right, I'm in. I'm in. I'm good it. You know, I'll do it, and you know, if I decide to do it, I'm doing it.

00:45:35
Speaker 1: I'm I'm you're committing.

00:45:37
Speaker 2: I'm committing. And so in the other side of my brain, I'm thinking, okay, this is me. Uh, I gotta be funny. I got to come up with stuff, and they had writers, they had a writer, you know, to come up with things. It doesn't work for that show because everything happens in the moment. Yeah, you can't. You know, you can't predecide what you know. You can write a joke about that question, but it might not have anything to do with their answer.

00:46:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's what's it called the crowd work. It's crowd work basically the people directly in front of you.

00:46:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So you know you just have to go, Okay, I can't. These jokes aren't working for me. I'm just gonna you know, I'll try and be funny. If I'm not, we'll just play the game, you know. So, so it was like stand up with a safety net. If I couldn't think of something, we just played the game. Yeah, but there was always something and it happened in real time, so I could never remember it because my mind is working in real time, so I you know, I would clock that something was funny at the end of the show, go there was something funny. Can I don't remember what it was? And they go, oh, it was you know. So I never had a firm grasp on all the funny little things that happened until I made them go back. And you know, I said, you guys should do bloopers or something, you know, you know, and come up with the funny stuff.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: So that's did you good to have any hand in the editing? Because sometimes I think about, like if you were making like when you're it's like improv and stand up comedy mixed with also hosting job and sometimes when you're just talking off the cuff like that, did you have any saying like you know what, I may have said that, oh, you didn't have any sation.

00:47:17
Speaker 2: But you know I had replaced Louis Anderson. Yeah, and Louie is a very very funny guy, but he's also a very large guy. He couldn't move. I mean, that's why he stayed at the podium so much. He couldn't get around, and all of his comedy took time, and so a lot of it got edited out. Yeah, you know, and I realized that, you know, we don't have a lot of time. We have three minutes less than Network because we were already syndicated, so we instead of twenty two minutes, we had nineteen. So all of all of what I was trying to do was speed up the game part or the stuff so that I would have time like it looked like I had time to be you know, conversationally and off the cup and this and that. You know, I kind of worked on that in a in a weird kind of a way, but I didn't get to help edit or that was that was a whole nother thing. And you know, bravo to you for you know, becoming a director, because that much authority was just too much to a weight on my on my mind. That's why I never, you know, really truly did that. Well.

00:48:29
Speaker 1: The good the good news is, at least in sitcom, although you are the leader on the set, ultimately it's not the director's medium. I'm I'm making the showrunners dreams come true, and I'm working with the actors to make that happen. And so unlike on a movie set where it's just all in your hands and your vision. There's a there's a nice happy medium where I still have to answer to somebody else on a on a sitcom set. Are you I noticed.

00:48:55
Speaker 2: That that John pass One was was a step of that. I mean he had he had a lot more pull and how things got got edited and stuff like that.

00:49:06
Speaker 1: Pasquin is amazing. I was interviewed by him in order to get the job over at Shifting Gears. Uh, And he he came by and and would watch me work and ask me questions about why I was doing things the way I was doing them, and he he gave me input. He made my episode better. Yeah, Pasquin is.

00:49:25
Speaker 2: That is so cool, phenomenal. I learned Jonathan is trying to do that too.

00:49:30
Speaker 1: I know Jonathan came to set with me when I directed my episode of Shifting Gears and he's he absolutely would want me to tell you hello, I'm still very close to Jonathan. I don't know when the last time was you saw or spoke to him, but we're still very good friends. Yeah. Yeah, you guys need to have a reunion. Do you have When was the last time you saw or spoke to Tim?

00:49:48
Speaker 2: Well, how don't you seen the internet. A CBS is offering us a billion dollars?

00:49:53
Speaker 1: What what? Oh, yeah, I've see this.

00:49:57
Speaker 2: Oh it's clickbait. It's it's totally clear. Ba nice. You know, it's like, really a billion dollars.

00:50:05
Speaker 3: We're not familiar with the clickbait articles. We don't know it too well.

00:50:09
Speaker 2: Go on, go on to Facebook or whatever and say CBS home Improvement one billion dollars and it'll come.

00:50:15
Speaker 1: It'll come out.

00:50:16
Speaker 2: Love it.

00:50:17
Speaker 1: Well. One other thing I wanted to talk to you about. We had Debbie Dunning on the show recently, and I know you too are doing some conventions together and golf tournaments together with new fans all around the world. Did you ever think you would still be talking about home improvement thirty years later, the same way we are still talking about Boy Meets World thirty years later.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: I don't think I that did not compute. You know. It was like, because we don't have that in our life. We don't, you know now that we're now that I'm older, I can look back and go, oh, yeah, okay, I can see how all that is. But you know, trying to project that for thirty years people, you know, we we I started out without social media without the Internet, and then it happened after Home Improvement, right, right, So all of these actors from okay, we'll say two thousand and five on on all these new shows had the benefit of our experience because we'll throw it up there online and go, you know, this is how I fell out. This is what happened, and they can learn from that. We had nothing to learn from except, you know, maybe some articles in Pop teen magazine or whatever. But I didn't read those, and so I didn't really have a you know, context for what this was going to be.

00:51:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I can tell you in Team Beat, all they really talked about was our favorite pizza toppings. It wasn't. It wasn't some real you know, education journalism articles.

00:51:45
Speaker 2: So you know, did you read any of Jonathan's Because he was like a fifty year old man in a twelve year old body. He might have thrown some of that stuff in there.

00:51:53
Speaker 1: I know. Jonathan wanted us to get matching minivans as our first cars. Jonathan, No, I do not want a minivan. Let alone won that matches none of mine he got he got we did. I got a Forerunner and he got the Toyota Land cruiser, So we did get mad. They were they were like, you know, his and hers.

00:52:15
Speaker 3: Not not not bashing minivans by the way.

00:52:17
Speaker 1: You know, you know I where loves min He keeps telling me that he wants me to get a minivan.

00:52:22
Speaker 2: Well, you know, Scooby Doo had the mystery machine he did exactly.

00:52:27
Speaker 1: Richard, Where can people see you?

00:52:29
Speaker 2: Now?

00:52:29
Speaker 1: What are you working on? What do people what do you want people to know? Where can where can we send people who want to catch over you?

00:52:35
Speaker 2: Okay, I've become an influencer for Natty Light, doing stuff for do my own, which is yard maintenance. I'm doing the pocket hose. I'm doing a little movie in Michigan in September where I play a sheriff that's kind of on the shady side. You know, I don't know. I just I show up and do stuff.

00:52:59
Speaker 1: But you know, what's a pocket hose?

00:53:02
Speaker 3: Pocket hocket hose, pucket hose? O, my god, what.

00:53:08
Speaker 2: Pock Totally different podcast?

00:53:13
Speaker 5: Okay, it's a tiny prostitute you carry around?

00:53:16
Speaker 1: How do you not know.

00:53:17
Speaker 3: This in your pocket?

00:53:18
Speaker 1: When you guys are saying pocket hose, Like that's much more clear. What is a pocket?

00:53:24
Speaker 2: It's a small hose that you get, a hose that expands when you put water through it.

00:53:29
Speaker 3: Yes, it's tiny and so it can fit in your pocket.

00:53:32
Speaker 1: It's a pocket hose in their pocket.

00:53:36
Speaker 2: Well, now you're you know now because you've talked about it around your phone, it's gonna it's gonna pop up in all your Oh.

00:53:43
Speaker 1: Have tiny little prostitutes coming in your house.

00:53:48
Speaker 2: Listen, I have to go. I have to go be an important actor right now. I gotta go.

00:53:55
Speaker 1: So much for being here with us. It's always a joy to see you, so much fun to talk about. You have an incredible career, an incredible story. Thank you for being with us.

00:54:03
Speaker 2: We'll call me back and we can finish the conversation at some other point.

00:54:08
Speaker 1: I would love that. Thank you so much.

00:54:11
Speaker 2: Take care. Bye.

00:54:14
Speaker 1: You guys said pocket it's a pocket hose. You gotta know.

00:54:20
Speaker 5: A pocket You just saw these tiny little prostitutes anything.

00:54:26
Speaker 1: He was saying after it.

00:54:27
Speaker 2: Like what I mean?

00:54:30
Speaker 4: It actually just sounds like the name for a great sex toy, right, like a pocket a pocket hoe.

00:54:39
Speaker 1: Why would you need a hose in your pocket?

00:54:42
Speaker 5: No, it's just it it comes in a little like it the entire hose.

00:54:46
Speaker 1: Again, what is the what how does this benefit means a hose be normal sized because then it takes.

00:54:51
Speaker 5: Up a ton of space, whereas this one takes up this amount of space and you hit the water and then it inflates to like full size. And then when you put water in a regular size prostitute and it gets to be a big sized prostitute like that same thing exactly exactly.

00:55:05
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us your emails Podmeets World Show at gmail dot com. And we've gotten merched.

00:55:18
Speaker 3: Well, it's got to be pocket hose, I mean not, can it not be? You know, little prostitutes from all around the world pocket hose merch.

00:55:27
Speaker 5: Daniel still cannot wrap her head around a tiny little prostitute just hanging out, just sitting there.

00:55:32
Speaker 1: Yeah. Podmeets Worldshow dot com writer, send us out. We love you all, pod dismissed.

00:55:42
Speaker 4: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast producer hosted by Danielle Fischel, Wilfordell and Ryder Strong Executive producers Jensen Karp and Amy Sugarman Executive in charge of production, Danielle Romo, producer and editor, Tarasubash producer, Maddie Moore engineer and Boy Meets World Superman Easton out. Our theme song is by Kyle Morton of Typhoon. Follow us on Instagram at Podmets World Show or email us at podmetsworldshowat gmail dot com.

00:56:09
Speaker 2: M