Michael Richards Opens Up About the 2006 Standup Incident That Derailed His Career

Seinfeld star Michael Richards disappeared from the public eye following the now-infamous 2006 incident at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood, CA, in which he launched into a racist tirade in response to a group of hecklers who kept interrupting his set. Though he initially apologized for the incident, he never attempted a comeback, making only scant appearances on the seventh season of Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2009 and a 2012 episode of Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

Now, as the 74-year-old is getting ready to release his upcoming memoir, Entrances and Exits, he's speaking out about the incident that effectively derailed his career.

Though Richards now tells People that he was "immediately sorry the moment I said it onstage," he still isn't looking for forgiveness or a comeback. Instead of trying to turn his career around, he admits that he's spent the past 17 years in "deep analysis" to "figure out where all the anger was coming from."

"My anger was all over the place and it came through hard and fast," Richards said. "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."

Richards has since learned about himself that his own insecurities played a part in his reaction. After being raised by a single mom who wasn't able to get an abortion in the late 1940s, he realizes he's always struggled with a feeling of not being wanted.

"Somehow I couldn’t connect to the joy of being an artist," he explained to the publication. "I was a good character actor, but I was comfortable being the character, not in being me."

"I said no to the offer of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I didn’t feel deserving," Richards recalled, of turning down opportunities at the height of his fame. "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."

However, while he still maintains that he's not a racist, he also concedes that he has no valid excuse for using hate language. "I have nothing against Black people," he added. "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."

Entrances and Exits ships and hits shelves on June, 4, 2024.