Richard Kind has played everything from a child’s imaginary friend in the Pixar fantasy Inside Out to a neighbour with antibiotic-resistant pinkeye in Only Murders in the Building. He was a physics savant with a sebaceous cyst in the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, Joaquin Phoenix’s final tormentor in the nightmarish Beau Is Afraid and Larry David’s insufferable cousin Andy in Curb Your Enthusiasm, where he squabbled over the correct direction of travel for a Lazy Susan and became an accessory to the murder of a swan. “Ubiquitous?” splutters Kind, his letterbox mouth agape. “I’m all over the fucking place! Nobody works more than me.”
We meet at the Garrick theatre in London, where the genial 69-year-old is beginning a seven-week stint in Mel Brooks’ bad-taste, Nazi-spoofing musical The Producers. Kind is temporarily taking over from Andy Nyman in the role of Broadway huckster Max Bialystock, who plans to swindle his backers by staging a surefire stinker called Springtime for Hitler and pocketing their investments when it closes prematurely.
