Carol Kane reveals epic prank “Taxi” costar Andy Kaufman pulled on her
The "Taxi" cast reunited on "The View" after 45 years to reflect on making the hit sitcom.
Carol Kane has revealed that her Taxi costar Andy Kaufman once hilariously fooled her into thinking he was taking her out of the country.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star reflected on the late Kaufman's prank during a 45-year reunion with her fellow Taxi actors on Monday's episode of The View, on which she appeared alongside Danny DeVito, Marilu Henner, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, and Christopher Lloyd.
Cohost Sara Haines asked Kane to recall working with Kaufman in character as Simka Gravas, the wife of Kaufman's immigrant mechanic, Latka Gravas, who spoke in an invented language.
ABC
Taxi reunion on The View"I thought it was so complicated, I wanted to sound just like him. There were some words, but most of it was just made up, and when I [asked] him, 'I really need to study this, how do you do it?' He said, 'Well, it's just like when you're a little kid and you open your mouth and speak Russian or Chinese.' For him, it was just an easy, natural thing because he could channel being a kid," Kane remembered, adding that Kaufman once told her that, to perfect the inflection, they needed to practice speaking to people from international regions.
"He said, 'We have to go out to dinner, we have to go somewhere where no one will recognize us, so we're going to Mexico.' So, I pull up to his house in Laurel Canyon, and he gets on the phone and he's on the phone forever in the kitchen, and I finally came in and said to him, 'Andy, if we're going to Mexico, we better go now. We better leave,'" Kane said. "He looked at me like I was out of my mind, that I believed him. He thought I was nuts. So, we go to a Chinese restaurant and we arranged a thing where I told him what I wanted, he ordered in English, and the waiter would come and ask me what I wanted, and I had to do it in the language. We sat there for a couple hours, pretending that I spoke it, and, in a while, I spoke it!"
Though Kaufman, who died at age 35 in 1984, appeared as Latka across all five seasons of Taxi, Kane first appeared in a small role on season 2, and didn't join as a series regular until the series' final season in 1982.
The View airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
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