Andy Richter

In Obsession (2026), Andy Richter’s Carter gets the dry lines while the central courtship grows uncomfortable. We laughed because he lands those lines without making the discomfort go away. Curry Barker’s horror gives the larger task to Inde Navarrette, and Richter’s contribution is rightly smaller. He makes a supporting part count without asking the film to stop for him. It is the sort of performance that can be taken for granted, especially from an actor so closely associated with being somebody else’s sidekick.

His partnership with Conan O’Brien made that supporting skill familiar, beginning on Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1993. Richter’s affable reactions to broader absurdity are well suited to a programme where listening matters as much as speaking. Leading roles in Andy Richter Controls the Universe (2002–03) and Andy Barker, P.I. (2007) offered a chance to move beyond the sidekick job, but both series were short-lived. By Conan (2010–21), he was back alongside O’Brien. We would not judge the acting by how long the sitcoms lasted.

Mort, the small lemur he voices in Madagascar (2005), is a useful reminder that Richter can dispense with mildness. The high pitch and excitability are a long way from the easy supporting presence of Morris in Elf (2003). We value the restraint of his live-action work, but it has a limitation: a quick, self-deprecating line does not necessarily give us much of a character. Reliability needs a script that offers something more than a familiar face.

That is why Obsession is a useful place to notice him. Barker’s script refuses to accept Bear’s belief that he is the nice one, and the dry humour belongs in a film already suspicious of its leading man. Richter fits without softening the unease, though this remains a supporting turn rather than a reason to choose the film on his name alone. Start there if horror is your sort of evening; expect a few well-placed laughs, not an Andy Richter vehicle.