‘Seinfeld’ star Michael Richards reflects on 2006 racist rant

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Michael Richards, who played Cosmo Kramer for nine seasons on Seinfeld, is looking back on the 2006 racial outburst at a comedy club that effectively ended his career.

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The three-time Emmy winner, who is getting ready to release his memoir Entrances and Exits, has been out of the limelight for the past 18 years. Last month, he made a rare red carpet appearance at the Hollywood premiere for his co-star Jerry Seinfeld’s Netflix movie Unfrosted. But he has kept a low profile since he launched into the foul-mouthed tirade and used racial epithets while onstage at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles.

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“I’m not racist,” Richard tells PEOPLE when discussing the slurs he hurled at hecklers that night in November 2006. “I have nothing against Black people. The man who told me I wasn’t funny had just said what I’d been saying to myself for a while. I felt put down. I wanted to put him down.”

Richards, 74, tells the outlet that he was angry with himself.

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“Anger is quite a force. But it happened. Rather than run from it, I dove into the deep end and tried to learn from it. It hasn’t been easy. Crisis managers wanted me to do damage control. But as far as I was concerned, the damage was inside of me,” he says.

But Richards insists that he isn’t expecting forgiveness.

“I’m not looking for a comeback,” he says.

According to coverage of the incident in a 2006 article from The Guardian, Richards became angry when a group of people in the crowd, who were allegedly Black, started heckling him during his show. “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass,” Richards seethed, before adding: “Throw his ass out. He’s a n—–! He’s a n—–! He’s a n—–! A n—–, look, there’s a n—–!” 

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Audience members fired back at him, with one person saying, “That’s un-f—ng called for,” while another added: “”It’s not funny. That’s why you’re a reject, never had no shows, never had no movies. Seinfeld, that’s it.”

Richards says that he has used the ensuing years to do a “deep analysis” on himself, grappling with being raised by a single mother, who originally wanted an abortion, and his issues with fame.

“I said no to the offer of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I didn’t feel deserving,” he says. “I said no to hosting Saturday Night Live twice because I didn’t feel good enough. I was never really satisfied with my Seinfeld performance. Fame magnified my insecurities.” 

Days after his rant, Richards appeared on David Letterman to apologize for using the N-word during that fateful night.

“I was at a comedy club trying to do my act, and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage,” Richards said. “For me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry. I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.”

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But his career, already on a slide after the end of Seinfeld in 1998, was irreparably damaged. Since 2006, he’s appeared in a handful of Curb Your Enthusiasm episodes and acted in one season of Kirstie Alley’s eponymous sitcom in 2013.

Instead, the father of two has plunged himself into studying religion and philosophy. His memoir will encapsulate all that he has learned. 

“This book is a hymn to the irrational, the senseless spirit that breaks the whole into pieces, a reflection on the seemingly absurd difficulties that intrude upon us all,” a blurb from his upcoming book reads (per USA Today). “Upset and turmoil is with us all the time. It’s at the basis of comedy. It’s the pratfall we all take.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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