Q&A with Rich Talarico

Rich Talarico is a Peabody Award winning and four-time Emmy nominated writer and producer best known for his work on Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. Rich has also written/produced shows like Review for Comedy Central, MADtv, Saturday Night Live as well as, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Rich produced and wrote Frank TV for TBS and was a writer/performer on The Sketch Pad for HBO. Rich served as improv coach on the first Anchorman film and did script punch-ups on Mean Girls and the Oscar-winning Get Out. Rich's most recent feature film script, The Widow Daredevil, was named an official selection of the 2020 Beverly Hills Film Festival. Rich took his first improv class from Stephen Colbert at Chicago’s Second City in 1992 and then went on the road with Second City’s National Touring Company. He later co-created five original sketch comedy revues with Second City's Etc. and Main Stage Companies. While in Chicago, Rich was a performer and teacher at Improv Olympic (now iO) under the direction of Charna Halpern and the late, Del Close. Rich played on iO house teams, co-created several shows and performed with early casts of Chicago’s longest-running improv show: "The Armando Diaz Experience, Theatrical Movement and Hootenanny”. Rich has appeared in small roles on MADtv, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and the feature film, High Fidelity. Rich has appeared in several TV commercials, most notably A&W Rootbeer’s “Mr. Dumass”.