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Beloved comedy icon Fred Willard died on Friday at age 86. The actor, who was best known for his roles in mockumentaries like Best in Show and Spinal Tap, enjoyed a prolific career, often playing good-natured simpletons, blissfully unaware that they were in way over their heads—and all the funnier for it.
“My father passed away very peacefully last night at the fantastic age of 86 years old,” Willard’s daughter, Hope Mulbarger, said in a statement, confirming that he died of natural causes. “He kept moving, working, and making us happy until the very end. We loved him so very much! We will miss him forever.”
As with Jerry Stiller, another comedy legend who died earlier this month, Fred Willard leaves behind a vast catalog of side-splitting film and TV appearances. He got his start in the late ’60s, rose to prominence working with Christopher Guest on several mockumentaries starting in the ’80s, and regularly popped up on TV, having appeared in shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, Modern Family, Community, King of the Hill, and many more. Here are some of Willard’s best appearances that you can stream or rent right now.
Willard first met up with Christopher Guest when they both appeared in the 1984 classic This Is Spinal Tap. Willard has a fairly small but memorable part in the film, appearing as an Air Force lieutenant who gives the titular metal band a tour of the base. It’s a classic Willard appearance—he’s both commanding and charmingly oblivious as he displays a little too much confidence in his attempts to connect with the long-haired musicians. “We are such fans of your music, and all of your records,” Willard says. “I’m not speaking of yours, personally, but the whole genre, the rock and roll. All the exciting things that are happening.”
Willard would go on to star in Guest’s mockumentaries five times after Spinal Tap. In Best in Show, he plays Buck Laughlin, a color commentator who clearly knows nothing about dogs—and won’t let that stop him from talking up a storm at the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. (“Are they ever allowed to do anything like that? Dress up the dog in a funny way?” he asks after suggesting that putting a Sherlock Holmes hat on a bloodhound might be a hoot.) Willard is also an absolute scene-stealer in Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration, and Mascots, the last of which is streaming on Netflix. But Buck Laughlin wins the award for, well, best in show.
Willard’s best characters all possess some level of authority that the character doesn’t necessarily deserve, and they’re not reflective enough to ask any questions about how things got to be that way. As KVWN channel 4’s station director, Ed Harken, Willard is perhaps a bit more competent than most of his other characters (he knows enough to not put a question mark in Ron Burgundy's teleprompter script), but he’s ultimately still a bit of a clueless dunce—especially when it comes to his son. (“Apparently, my son was on something called ‘acid,’ and was shooting a bow and arrow into a crowd.”)
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Willard only appears in one scene in Tim Robinson’s incredible short-form sketch comedy series, but given that it’s an insanely joyous celebration of life (and wacky organ sounds) at a funeral, it feels pretty appropriate. Willard plays “New Joe,” a replacement organist far too cheerful (and loud) for a somber occasion. Seems like a funeral that Willard might like, honestly.
Willard’s part in this underappreciated Comedy Central series from a few years back isn’t huge, but if it gets you to watch Andy Daly’s darkly hilarious masterpiece, it’s worthy of all the praise in the world. It helps that Willard is funny as ever, playing the sincere, fairly oblivious father-in-law to Daly’s Forrest MacNeil, a man attempting to review all of human experience no matter the cost to his life. And, as Willard’s Jack learns when he tags along on an attempt to review “space,” not everything deserves five stars.
With his performance as Shelby Forthright, the stentorian CEO of Wall-E’s Buy n Large megacorporation, Willard has the distinction of being one of the only actors to appear in a live-action role in a Pixar movie. Shelby appears via old footage from 700 years before the events of the film, when it seemed like maybe Buy n Large would be able to clean up an incredibly polluted Earth while all its citizens were flying through space in luxury starships. In a way, it’s one of Willard’s more moving roles, as you can feel reality intruding on his typical confidence and guilelessness. It’s scary, almost, and it stealthily shows how versatile Willard could be as an actor.
Netflix will premiere Willard’s final TV role posthumously when Space Force arrives on May 29. The show, from The Office creator Greg Daniels, follows Steve Carell as Mark Naird, the general in charge of the nascent, mostly bumbling new Space Force branch of the military. Willard plays Naird’s elderly, somewhat addled, occasionally wise father.
It’s not the biggest role Willard’s ever taken, but it’s noteworthy because his casting is a bit of an Easter egg. In the late '70s, Willard starred in a pilot for an TV show called Space Force—one that was both ahead of its time and, by all accounts, not especially good. You can watch the pilot on YouTube, or check out Willard’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he got into the old ’70s uniform again to make some jokes about Donald Trump’s big idea.
