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Richard Kind has played everything from a child’s imaginary friend in the Pixar fantasy Inside Out to a neighbour with antibiotic-resistant pinkeye in Only Murders in the Building. He was a physics savant with a sebaceous cyst in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, Joaquin Phoenix’s final tormentor in the nightmarish Beau Is Afraid and Larry David’s insufferable cousin Andy in Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he squabbled over the correct direction of travel for a Lazy Susan and became an accessory to the murder of a swan. “Ubiquitous?” splutters Kind, his letterbox mouth agape. “I’m all over the fucking place! Nobody works more than me.”
We meet at the Garrick theatre in London, where the genial 69-year-old is beginning a seven-week stint in Mel Brooks’ bad-taste, Nazi-spoofing musical The Producers. Kind is temporarily taking over from Andy Nyman in the role of Broadway huckster Max Bialystock, who plans to swindle his backers by staging a surefire stinker called Springtime for Hitler and pocketing their investments when it closes prematurely.
Today, the actor is doing a flawless impression of Goldilocks. Unhappy with the dimly lit room in which we begin our conversation, he decides we need to relocate. “If it’s too dingy, I fall asleep,” he says in his New Jersey whine, “and then it’ll only be you doing the talking.” He marches us into the deserted foyer, where we perch on the stairs for a few minutes, only to be drowned out by the racket from rehearsals. “Too noisy,” he says, heading off again. Finally, he settles on the alley outside the fire exit, where benches and potted plants make the drab space hospitable.
Kind played Max on Broadway in 2004 and again at the 17,500-capacity Hollywood Bowl eight years later. “This role is a workout,” he says. “When I first did it, I lost 30lb. I call it The Producers diet. It’s better than those shots.” He has been reacquainting himself with the show’s breakneck musical numbers such as The King of Broadway, where the lyrics come thick, fast and vulgar: “I always had the biggest hits / The biggest bathrooms at the Ritz / My showgirls had the biggest tits / I never was the pits in any way.” Kind reaches for an Exorcist image: “Once you’ve learned it all, the words pour out of your mouth like pea soup out of Linda Blair.”
His interpretation of Max is closer to the bulldozer energy of Zero Mostel, who originated the part in the Oscar-winning 1967 film, than to the more elegant Nathan Lane, who was the first to play it on Broadway. “Nathan glides,” he says. “I’m a big bear. I lumber.”
A friend once told him that only two things on Earth are visible from space: the Great Wall of China and every acting choice that Kind ever made. “I’ve become a better actor in the past 20 years,” he says. “But this is an outsized show, so my choices are enormous. Max is fun to play because he has appetites that cannot be sated. The more he has, the more he wants.”
That’s very un-Kind behaviour. In film and TV, the actor is content with small but idiosyncratic roles. “I’m parsley on a plate of meat and potatoes. Really good parsley. As green and fresh as parsley can get.” Theatre is different. “I’m at the point where I can say ‘no’ to a stage role unless it’s challenging.” Doesn’t he crave being the main dish on screen, too? “Sure. I’ve got an ego. But look. People may say, ‘Oh, I like that guy. Everything he does is good.’ Nobody says, ‘I’m going to spend £20 to go see Richard Kind in a movie.’ If you accept that, you can be happy and satisfied.”
He cut his teeth with Second City, the Chicago improvisational troupe. Later came TV work with the comedy titan Carol Burnett and roles in sitcoms including Spin City alongside Michael J Fox. One failed comedy pilot co-starred George Clooney, who briefly became Kind’s flatmate and remains a close pal. I don’t ask him about this – Kind is a born trouper but the light fades in his eyes whenever an interviewer brings up his famous BFF – though I wonder how it feels to have a dear friend insulted publicly by the US president, as Clooney has been.
“Horrible,” he sighs. “I’m very protective of George always. I don’t even like critics to talk about him badly. And I don’t want to take Trump seriously.” He launches into a diatribe against the president, laced with expletives and unrepeatable accusations. “Listen to how ugly I’m talking,” he says, tutting at himself. Though at least this outburst suggests he has what it takes to tackle the role he hopes to play one day: Roy Cohn, Trump’s vile mentor, in Angels in America. Is there anything Kind couldn’t do? “I’d make a terrible Blanche DuBois.”
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Richard Kind is in The Producers at the Garrick theatre, London, from 23 March-9 May. Andy Nyman returns from 11 May
