Richard Appel - Early Life and Law Career

Early Life and Law Career

Appel was born May 21, 1963 in New York City, to Nina and Alfred Appel. His mother was a lawyer, taught law and served as dean of Loyola University Chicago's law school from 1983–2004, and his father (who died on May 2, 2009) was professor of English at Northwestern University and an expert on Vladimir Nabokov. Appel has a sister, Karen Oshman. Appel lived in California while his parents taught at Stanford University before the family moved to Wilmette, Illinois, where Appel went to North Shore Country Day School. Appel became interested in comedy from a young age, noting: "I grew up watching The Dick Van Dyke Show and always thought that what Rob Petrie did for a living was what I wanted to do." His father introduced him to the works of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and encouraged him to "read comic books and watch quality television", and he and a friend produced parody adverts and news pieces with a Betamax and often engaged in prank phone calls. At high school, he wrote sketches and routines and dreamt of being a comedy writer but "didn't know anyone who did it, and it didn't seem like a career that was open to me."

He attended Harvard University and wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, alongside Conan O'Brien and Greg Daniels, both of whom he beat for the chance to give the comic graduation speech, the Ivy Oration. Tad Friend noted: "Everyone thought it would be Conan automatically, but Rich's speech was funny and self-deprecating, in a way that was both silly and profound." After graduation in 1985 with a degree in history and literature, Appel attended Harvard Law School rather than moving into comedy, because the idea of following his mother and grandfathers into the legal profession "appealed" to him. He then worked for two years as a law clerk for Judge John M. Walker, Jr., of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, working on the trials of people such as Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley. Subsequently, for three years from 1990, Appel served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Fellow attorney Geoffrey Berman stated Appel "was an excellent lawyer. He was good on his feet, articulate, with a sense of the law that was common-sensical, more intuitive than based on books." Appel still had dreams of becoming a comedy writer despite the security working as a lawyer offered him, but only in 1993, after his wife became pregnant, was Appel "reminde that this was life and could shape it." Three months later he had retained an agent, had written and submitted two spec-scripts, and had moved to California.