Working with family and Robert Altman example

Andy shares admiration for Robert Altman having kids work on set and hopes his children might collaborate with him.

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In this episode of Parenting Is a Joke, Andy Richter joins Ophira Eisenberg to talk about raising three kids across two generations—his 23-year-old son, 18-year-old daughter, and a four-year-old he’s helping raise with his new wife. Andy reflects on how parenting feels different now that he’s happier, newly remarried, and out of a long stretch of depression. He shares how his youngest daughter “runs the household,” including her silent-scream protest when he put her to bed, and how he navigates parenting alongside a Disney-obsessed extended family where his sister-in-law once played Jasmine at Disneyland. Andy contrasts his own self-reliant, latchkey childhood with the more protected upbringing of his older kids and admits he sometimes overcorrected by doing too much for them. He describes the uneasy balance of using personal material in comedy—recalling the “divorced dad” jokes he deleted from Twitter—and the line between honesty and oversharing, both online and in family life. Through it all, his warmth and humor shine, whether he’s talking about his son’s Uber Eats job, his daughter’s bedtime negotiations, or his hope that one day his kids will want to work with him the way Robert Altman’s children did—with love strong enough to last sixteen hours on set.

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