“I didn’t plan any of this shit.”
That was Paul Reiser’s hilarious and refreshingly honest assessment of the long—and still ongoing—list of accomplishments in a career spanning over four decades. His clever and relatable humor first led to success as a standup, and soon enough he emerged as an (unintentional) film star, later co-creating and starring in an Emmy Award-winning sitcom and writing a New York Times bestseller. A pretty impressive resume for someone who once considered the chance of performing a set on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson as the ceiling of possible achievements.
Last November, Reiser added his first standup special in over 30 years to his oeuvre. Having taken a break from show business after Mad About You’s original seven-year run (“I wanted to do nothing, which I succeeded at”), Reiser discovered that his muscle memory had diminished, but Life, Death, & Rice Pudding—streaming for free on Philo—proves that he hasn’t lost his sharp wit and ability to effortlessly connect with audiences, dispensing parental advice (“If you have kids and you’re not worried, I don’t think you’re doing it right”) and reflecting on getting older (“At a certain age, don’t help anybody move a couch”).
“I kind of cringe when I look at stuff I did 20 or 30 years ago,” Reiser mused at the Music Box Theatre during a conversation with Mark Bazer as part of the Chicago Humanities Spring Festival. Nowadays, Reiser, who earned a new generation of fans thanks to roles in Stranger Things and The Kominsky Method, prefers to embrace being a Baby Boomer. “As I get older, playing the cantankerous Jew just feels right,” he says.
Comedy was a key part of Reiser’s upbringing, though he says his father’s humor was often unintentional. He began performing standup in college and a happy accident led to a role in the 1982 Oscar-nominated film Diner. Reiser showed up to the audition only to meet up for lunch with a friend who was trying out before he was plucked to try out himself. (Must have made for an awkward lunch.) That led to roles in Beverly Hills Cop, Aliens, and the quintessentially '80s sitcom My Two Dads.
After My Two Dads finished its three-season run, Reiser co-created Mad About You, which won ten Emmy Awards in the '90s and enjoyed a brief revival in 2019. Like fellow NBC must-see TV hits Seinfeld and Friends, it was set in New York and delivered big laughs with a decidedly simple premise; in this case, the day-to-day life of a married couple played by Reiser and Helen Hunt, who currently stars in Betrayal at the Goodman Theatre. (Reiser wasn’t able to catch the show but grabbed coffee with his former co-star the day after his Music Box appearance.) “There’s no shortage of silly shit that couples will fight about,” Reiser says.
The show also afforded him the opportunity to work with iconic comedian guest stars such as Jerry Lewis, Tim Conway, and the legendary Mel Brooks, with whom a starstruck Reiser struggled to keep his composure. “I was useless” when Brooks appeared on the show, he says. “It was like staring into the sun.”
Reiser also touched on more recent projects such as the 2022 series Reboot, which was prematurely canceled because “some of the execs at Hulu—not all of them—are assholes,” and his experience co-writing What a Fool Believes, a 2024 memoir by Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers. When Bazer asked Reiser how he feels about the “controversial” yacht rock label critics attach to McDonald’s music, Reiser didn’t miss a beat, rebutting, “Gaza is controversial”; a mildly dismissive musical diss not so much.
At the beginning of the event, Reiser insisted, “Nothing is important tonight,” promising the audience a reprieve of “an hour and a half to not hate our lives” in contrast to the bleak outlook defining 2025 for so many of us. He was wrong about that, however; something very important did take place. When Bazer invited the audience to join the discussion, I had the opportunity to ask Reiser a vital question.
I recently discovered My Two Dads thanks to a Step By Step rewatch podcast hosted by two of that show's stars, Staci Keanan and Christine Lakin (the latter having the distinct honor of being my first celebrity crush). Before that TGIF staple premiered in 1991, Keanan starred in My Two Dads as Nicole, the titular “my” whose life took an unexpected turn when her mother died and a judge placed her in the custody of two of her mother’s ex-boyfriends who (gasp!) were quite different from one another.
I asked Reiser if, in the hypothetical scenario that I launched my own My Two Dads rewatch podcast, he would allow me to interview him about the show. He looked straight at me and, as the hundreds of other attendees can testify, said, “If you do it, yes.”
You heard him, folks. My calendar’s open, Paul. Let’s make this happen.
Thanks to Stephanie Storey for her assistance in covering this event and photographer David Kindler. Check out Chicago Humanities Festival for information on future events.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider supporting Third Coast Review’s arts and culture coverage by making a donation. Choose the amount that works best for you, and know how much we appreciate your support!