Andy Richter Says He’s Still Recovering 2 Weeks After ‘DWTS’ Run: ‘It Was Borderline Abuse’

“Dancing With the Stars” changed Andy Richter for the better, but he is still physically recovering from his nine-week stint on the competition series. The comedian quickly became a fan-favorite on and off screen. Though his dancing often placed him at the bottom of the leaderboard, his endearing personality and TikTok shenanigans with his partner Emma Slater earned him a fan vote that kept him around until the quarter finals. Now two weeks after his elimination, Richter said his body still has not fully bounced back. “Certainly my body is enjoying not dancing, just because I was really getting to the point where I was always having to ice my knees every hour,” the former “Conan” sidekick told People. “We’d dance a while and then I’d have to ice my knee, and there was a lot of pain and getting injections just to be able to keep going … It’s not even just that I’m sort of resting, I feel like my legs are healing now. It wasn’t just exercise, it was borderline abuse that I was doing to myself.” The comedian often wore knee braces on both legs during rehearsals and even during the competition. As the oldest competitor, Richter had to keep up with his younger co-stars. His partner used comedy bits to make them standout, but he still used the same technique that the 20something dancers did. Richter admitted working out is not the same outside of the ballroom and without his dance partner. “As much as I do feel like my body’s healing, I do kind of miss the physicality of it,” he adds. “Going to the gym and doing the elliptical is not the same thing as rehearsing a new dance with Emma. It’s just not.” The comedian said “Dancing With the Stars” made him fall in love with dance as an art form and open up a new part of himself. He credits Slater for this new level of growth and buoying him for as long as he lasted on the show. He almost turned down the offer to join the series in April of this year. The paycheck and exposure were attractive to him, he shared, but the potential for a physical transformation almost mattered more to him. “I knew that that would be good for me because I was very much aware of the fact that I kind of was in a bit of a rut just in terms of my physicalness, my physicality, my body,” he said. “I really started to enjoy it and started to feel transformed by it and started to like the exercise,” he continues. “It definitely was hard. It’s long hours. It’s four hours a day, seven days a week, minimum. I have bad knees and a bad hip, and so there’s just plain old pain involved for me in doing it. But I really got into it and I really committed myself to it.” Richter also told People that the show pushed him outside of his bubble. He witnessed several older people in his life become stuck in their ways and feared that he could have easily fallen into that trap without bursting onto the ballroom floor. “There’s a lot of stuff that I didn’t think I could do anymore,” he confesses. “It’s made what I think is physically possible, it’s expanded that completely. And honestly, it’s kind of made me younger. I’m younger now than when I started doing this.” “Dancing With the Stars” three-hour Season 34 finale will air at 8 p.m. ET/PT Tuesday night, and Richter may make an appearance. Jordan Chiles, Alix Earle, Dylan Efron, Robert Irwin and Elaine Hendrix will compete for the mirrorball trophy.