Robert Culp

In his three-hour interview, Robert Culp (1930-2010) talks about his childhood interests and how he aspired to be an animator for Disney when he grew up. He talks about his acting training and his move to New York City, breaking into theater and television. He explains how he was able to get work in television as an indirect result of the Hollywood Blacklist, as a newcomer with no affiliations. Culp talks about his early experiences in Los Angeles as a struggling actor and describes his first role as a series regular, on the series Trackdown. He speaks fondly of working with Dick Powell, whose Four Star Productions produced that series. He describes some of the roles he had in a variety of the popular TV genres of the day— Western, detective, medical, sci-fi— including his memorable parts on the classic sci-fi anthology The Outer Limits. Culp then speaks in great detail about the role and the series with which he is most closely associated: "Kelly Robinson" on I Spy. For I Spy he talks about the on-location shooting, working with co-star Bill Cosby (and the controversial casting of an African American lead), and talks about some of the series' episodes in which he acted as well as wrote. He then speaks about memorable appearances in The Greatest American Hero and Everybody Loves Raymond. Stephen J. Abramson conducted the interview on November 6, 2007 in Los Angeles, CA.