Last Things First: Paul Reiser
Episode #406
Forty years after his first screen credit as Modell in the Barry Levinson film, Diner, Paul Reiser is enjoying a career renaissance, co-starring in the biggest series on both Netflix and Amazon in Stranger Things and The Boys. Now in his 60s, Reiser has returned to his first love, stand-up comedy, embarking on a nationwide tour in the fall of 2022. Reiser sat down with me to talk about stand-up then and now; rebooting Mad About You and then now co-starring in a Hulu comedy about reboots, called Reboot; making passion projects that might not get seen nowadays thanks to streaming platform algorithms; making Beverly Hills Cop movies with Eddie Murphy, and how it all comes back to The Comic Strip in the end. Or doesn’t.
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Last Things First, if you could indulge me for just a second — I mean probably a half hour, at least — is there by any chance an alternate take from season four of Stranger Things where — no spoilers — but when they find you, you say the words “This is not my office”?
Hahaha. There is no alternate take. That would have been a smart move. I'm looking for an alternate take which shows me alive and well and marching into season five. I have not been shown that, an indicator that that exists. So it's funny, people ask me what happens next year in Stranger Things. I go, I can't even tell you what happened this year, and I was in it. I'm the wrong guy to ask.