'Seinfeld' star Michael Richards spoke with ET this week about his 2006 racist tirade and his decision to step away from the spotlight.
Michael Richards played an iconic character on one of the most-beloved sitcoms of all time. But for the last 18 years, he's been best known for something much different.
The Seinfeld star sat down with ET's Nischelle Turner this week to open up about that infamous night at the Laugh Factory in November 2006, where he responded to a heckler with a racist tirade, going so far as to repeatedly yell, "He's a n****r! He's a n****r!" at the audience member.
"Trash talk, that's what I called it two days later, when I appeared on the Letterman show," he recounted. "Lot of trash talk -- two guys trying to pull each other down. But it's all my fault in that I let it get that way, you see? What does it mean, because I'm really yelling at myself in a sense, if I believe, and I do, that we're interconnected."
"The work for me is to find out well, look, if I'm gonna get all upset because someone says I'm not funny late at night, what's going on with me? How insecure am I feeling in front of an audience for somebody to come at me with that kind of a heckle?" he continued.
The incident flew under the radar for several days, until TMZ obtained cell phone video of Richards' tirade. Public backlash ensued, and Richards writes in his new memoir, Entrances and Exits, that he made the decision to "cancel himself" in the wake of the outburst.
"I took myself out. You don't need to take me out, I'll take myself out -- I'll save you the trouble," he said of his choice to step back from public life and live performances. "I'm pulling back from the community...I need to get into soul work, OK? I need to get into myself more to know thyself, so I'm taking myself out of the situation."
The incident certainly complicated Richards' comedic legacy. When the Seinfeld cast reunited for a 2009 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the actor recalls in his memoir, he initially didn't want to participate.
"I talk about that in the book, how uncomfortable it was to come back to television," he shared. "Larry [David] said he wanted to talk to me -- said he saw I was feeling uncomfortable... We went into a room together and he just said, 'I'm gonna get you through this.'"
"I wish that we would have put that scene in the reunion show, where I could be a little more myself, rather than playing at being myself," Richards added.
The Seinfeld cast's support of Richards has continued throughout the years. Jerry Seinfeld penned the forward to Entrances and Exits, and pays reverential tribute to his friend and former co-star.
"I have to say looking back on it all now, one of my very favorite things that I absolutely miss the most was just looking into Michael's eyes," Seinfeld writes, in part. "It's the most beautiful view in the world of comedy. If you could only see the way they dance and jump up when he's in the curl of the wave."
"I'm as committed to comedy as he is," Richards said of earning Seinfeld's love and respect. "He knows that I'm sincere and human, and he's aware of, ultimately, my commitment to the show and to him. I supported him. I'm his next door neighbor."
Richards was a guest on the season 1 finale of Seinfeld's interview series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in 2012, and said that Seinfeld questioned him off-screen about making a bigger return to acting and comedy.
"I said, 'You know, Jerry, I'm still working it,'" he recalled. "And he's going, 'Will you please just let it go?' and I said, 'It'll let me know.' I'm not there to let it go, because it's still on me, so I honor its presence, you know, I stay with what I am."
Nevertheless, Richards remains proud of his time as wacky neighbor Cosmo Kramer on Seinfeld. The show was lightning in a bottle for nine seasons on NBC, thanks in part to the performances of the core four stars: Seinfeld, Richards, Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. A photo of the comedy quartet adorns one of the last pages of Richards' book, a symbol of their significance in his life.
"That's the ultimate recognition in how I came into humanity, and therefore my heart is alive for the four of us creativity involved -- those nine wonderful seasons together, we worked so hard," he noted. "We just existed so well as an ensemble."
"When we came together, the chemistry, woo, man! We were just potent, ready to go," Richards continued. "We knew we were going to make a funny show, but we did not know it was going to become such an enormous hit 35 million people a week watching this thing."
As far as what he sees in his professional future, Richards said, "I'd like to do some appearances and talk more about things. Because I haven't been able to get into things much on these kinds of interviews [of just] six minutes, seven minutes."
"As far as an acting," he added, "I've been offered things and I don't take them and nothing interests me... I think if the material were right, it's possible."
Richards' memoir, Entrances and Exits, is out now.
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