You know him from comedic roles on Spin City and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but as an actor, Richard Kind can do it all: He’s voiced characters in Pixar films from Toy Story 3 to Cars 2 to Inside Out; was Tony-nominated for his work on Broadway in The Big Knife; and has played serious roles in serious shows, from Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter and Ben Affleck’s Argo to HBO’s Luck. And that’s not even mentioning his recent star turn as a toothy Rudy Giuliani in 2019’s Bombshell. The kindly Mr. Kind recently called in to HUSTLER from his COVID bunker to share his thoughts on the only man he “hate, hate, hates,” being pigeonholed as an actor and the fact that, oh, yeah, Richard Kind “fucks”!
HUSTLER: My kid loved you as Bing Bong in Inside Out, but I think that makes you the only person to appear in a Disney movie and HUSTLER.
RICHARD KIND: Aw, come on. Really? Dick Van Dyke? Julie Andrews? No? Then I hope my grandeur doesn’t diminish your magazine.
Are you a HUSTLER reader?
I was. I can’t say I am anymore, because now I get my pornography elsewhere. But when I was a kid, of course I was a reader. You loved it. You graduated from Playboy, which we had stuck in the cannon of Cadwalader Park in Trenton, and then we’d go to the park and pull it out. Well, “pull it out” is the wrong wording. But we’d pull the magazine out there to read. Then in college and after college you graduated to HUSTLER. That was just new for us, the hard stuff. It was really hardcore. Playboy you could joke, “I got it for the articles.” We did not get HUSTLER for the articles!
I’m always happy to see you onscreen. It seems to me there is a distinctive Richard Kind character. How would you describe that guy?
