TV Talk: John Larroquette talks about his bittersweet return to ‘Night Court’

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

BURBANK, Calif. — Actor John Larroquette had a succinct response three years ago when actress Melissa Rauch approached him with the idea of a “Night Court” sequel series: “ ‘That’s a great idea. You don’t need me for it,’ because it stands on its own,” he recalled telling her.

But the more they talked, the more he warmed to the idea.

“The actor sort of rose in me and I thought, well, that’s an interesting challenge to look at somebody you played 35 years ago: What’s happened to his life? Where is he now? … It began to appeal to me,” Larroquette said last month during a visit to the “Night Court” set on Stage 10 at Warner Bros. Studios as part of the Television Critics Association winter 2024 press tour.

But Larroquette’s interest in revisiting his Dan Fielding character was tempered the first time he stepped onto the set, re-created to match the one from the original series.

“Walking onto the set for the first time was sad, because, as we all know, the rest of the cast has over the years and now, all of the cast, except for Marsha (Warfield), who wasn’t part of the original — she didn’t come in till year three — so of the original cast, I am literally the only one left on the door, like Leo (DiCaprio) in ‘Titanic,’ and I wondered, will I make it?” he said. “It was a bit of a ghost town.”

Original “Night Court” star Harry Anderson died in 2018. Charlie Robinson died while Larroquette was filming the new “Night Court” pilot episode in 2021. Markie Post also died in 2021. Richard Moll died in 2023.

“There’s one person — Susan Gunter, who’s our script supervisor, and she was script supervisor on the original — I can look at and go, ‘You remember when … ?’ ” Larroquette said. “But she’s the only person I can do that with. I don’t bemoan it; it’s just that nobody else experienced it. There’s that elation because of a new crop of people, and then there’s the sadness of remembering all those people that are gone.”

Larroquette said he trusts the show’s new writers “to look at the spirit of the original and embellish with their own talents but still stay in the same universe.” The new series centers on Harry’s daughter, Judge Abby Stone (Melissa Rauch, “The Big Bang Theory”), and her relationship with her late father’s co-worker, Fielding.

“I always describe the show as sort of a vaudeville act,” Larroquette said. “(TV comedy producer) Chuck Lorre visited us awhile back, and he said the reason he loved ‘Night Court’ was because he’d watch it, there’d be a joke, and he knew that if you don’t like that joke, wait 10 seconds, there’ll be another one.’ ”

The embrace of the original “Night Court” is on full display in this week’s episode (8 p.m. Tuesday, WPXI-TV) that features the return of Bob (Brent Spiner) and June (Annie O’Donnell) Wheeler, West Virginians who seemed like they were straight out of “Grapes of Wrath.” They became recurring defendants on the original “Night Court” and once faced charges for “the illegal detonation of poultry.” Kate Micucci plays their now-adult daughter, Carol Ann.

Original series character Roz (Marsha Warfield), the show’s third court bailiff, already has appeared on the new “Night Court” and will return for the show’s second-season finale.

“Night Court” producers said coming back after the writers’ and actors’ strikes they had to make some adjustments to proposed holiday-themed episodes for holidays that already had passed.

(Not all comedies took this approach; CBS’s “Ghosts” opted to move forward with a Halloween episode that aired March 7.)

The “Night Court” Halloween episode got reconfigured as a Comic Con episode, featuring Larroquette donning “Star Trek” Klingon makeup, just as he had when playing the Klingon Maltz in the 1984 movie “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.”

“All credit (for) that goes to John Larroquette,” said “Night Court” executive producer Dan Rubin (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”). “When we talked about that Halloween episode, I’m like, ‘How are we going to save this thing?’ He’s like, ‘Well, if you’re looking for a costume …’ and then he sent me a picture of himself from ‘Star Trek III’ as Maltz. And it’s like, ‘Well, now that it’s his idea, he can’t be that mad when we make him put that on.’

“He still was (mad). He still came up to me that morning and said, ‘I never liked you.’ And he’s intimidating anyway, but when he’s dressed as a Klingon, forget about it.”

Larroquette said at least the makeup process was less time-consuming this time around.

“The first time I did it (in the ’80s), it took five-and-a-half hours every morning to put it on,” Larroquette said. “This only took 45 minutes, so I liked it a lot more than the original.”

NBC’s “Night Court” is one of just a few multi-cam comedies being made today, and Larroquette still sees a place for them.

“Charlie Robinson and I — God rest his soul — talked about it a few years ago: Some of the best comedy that’s ever come out of my brain was waiting for you to stop laughing,” Larroquette said. “Because if you’re shooting, you can’t just wait, right? You’ve got to stay alive. And some of the best physical stuff that just appeared to me in my brain — and I’m not giving myself any accolades here — but just the idea that you have to fill the moment.

“I’m an addict for Tim Conway and Harvey Korman, watching the dentist thing with him and the Novocain (on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’). So much of that is just whole cloth, on the spot, being made up because (the studio audience is) laughing so much you can’t continue with the script.

“You don’t have that in a single cam. You don’t wait for a laugh with one camera, but you do wait for a laugh when you have a live audience. And I think that adds to the ability to be funny, having to go, ‘OK, I’m going to have to pace it now. Now I can give them something else to keep the laugh rolling.’ To me, it’s magical and I love it. I love it the most.”