The Only Main Actors Still Alive From 1984’s Night Court
The untold truth of “Night Court” is a peculiar one. It’s a loud, offbeat, and unabashedly wacky sitcom that prefers to deal with criminal cases that are petty and weird instead of grim and gritty — but instead of being altogether too much, the show manages to get the recipe just right, to the tune of eight Primetime Emmys.
In fact, the show is still making a name for itself in the 2020s, and it’s not just because of nostalgia. 2023’s “Night Court” revival lays down the law and respects the original by retaining its peculiar vibe and utilizing tactical deployments of original cast members reprising their roles.
Though “Night Court” has stood the test of time, it’s been quite a few years since the original show ended. Unfortunately, this means that not every actor you see on the series is around anymore. Here’s a look at all the major actors from the cast of “Night Court” who are still alive.
John Larroquette (Dan Fielding)
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John Larroquette plays the obnoxious and sarcastic prosecutor Dan Fielding on the original “Night Court” and returns as an older and ever-so-slightly more mellow public defender version of the character on the 2023 show. Going by award season success alone, Larroquette is easily the MVP of the series, seeing as he’s responsible for all four of its acting Emmy wins … in a row, no less. He was so dominant that he ended up voluntarily drawing his name away from the Emmy pool. “As we got to that fifth season, I thought that Dan Fielding has been a great character,” the actor said in an interview with Gold Derby. “I didn’t think that the work deserved more attention. It wasn’t so that somebody else could win at all.” Of course, Larroquette ended up winning a fifth Emmy anyway, though it was for his guest star turn as Joey Heric on “The Practice.”
As his Emmy success not-so-subtly hints, Larroquette has had an extraordinary career. After “Night Court” ended, he starred on “The John Larroquette Show” for four seasons and appeared in a number of movies and TV shows that have kept him working steadily. Notably, he’s used his Dan Fielding skills in several projects, and some of his most iconic roles include the lawyer Mike McBride in the McBride TV movie series and Denny Crane’s (William Shatner) frenemy Carl Sack on “Boston Legal.”
Marsha Warfield (Roz Russell)
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The tough but sensitive Bailiff Roz Russell is one of the most memorable characters on “Night Court,” and Marsha Warfield plays the role to perfection. Like John Larroquette, she gets to explore her character even further on the 2023 revival, where Roz appears in a recurring role thanks to her new job as a private investigator. Notably, Roz has come out as gay — a development Warfield strongly suspects would never have been possible on the original show.
“Roz could not have been gay then. We never even considered such a thing,” the actor, who came out herself in 2017, told UPI. “I could have played her, but I don’t know if I could’ve come out then. My mother had asked me not to while she was alive and she was still alive.”
After the original run of “Night Court,” Warfield hosted her short-lived talk show “The Marsha Warfield Show,” played Dr. Maxine Douglas on the comedy-drama “Empty Nest,” and appeared in string of guest star roles before taking a lengthy break from acting at the turn of the millennium. She returned to acting in 2021, and has taken a slew of TV roles, including recurring character Toni Wilson on “9-1-1.”
Joleen Lutz (Lisette Hocheiser)
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A comparatively late-game addition to the “Night Court” cast, Joleen Lutz played stenographer Lisette Hocheiser on the show’s two final seasons. Since leaving “Night Court,” her career path has been one of the stranger ones you could imagine for an actor. While she has continued to work in that capacity and has appeared in guest star roles and minor recurring parts here and there, her true passion has been elsewhere.
“I’ve always been interested in animals,” Lutz said in an interview with Lancer Radio. “As a kid, I used to do rehab … We’d find a baby bunny or a bird with a broken wing, and we’d always repair it and put in back into urban wildlife. And at one point in my life, I think I had way too many animals, and my husband said, ‘You have to go somewhere else and get your fix. We can’t have all these animals in the house.’ And so I went to the zoo and I started volunteering.”
Lutz has indeed worked as a volunteer docent at the Los Angeles Zoo, which has introduced her as an interpretive naturalist of zoology. Notably, she hosted the zoo’s 2013 Valentine’s day fundraising event, where she educated the guests in the mating habits of the zoo animals.
William Utay (Phil Sanders and Dr. Rolf)
NBC
William Utay’s “Night Court” path was different than most actors’. He’s played no less than three different characters on the show — all connected to John Larroquette’s Dan Fielding in some way. On Season 2, he played the mime-attacking defendant of the week, Ivan Brewster, who interacts with Dan. His most notorious “Night Court” character is Dan’s secretly wealthy homeless accomplice, Phil Sanders. When Phil left the stage with an extremely dark musical instrument gag, Utay went on to portray his somewhat more clean-cut but far more villainous twin, Will.
After leaving Night Court, Utay’s roles have been a series of guest star spots on prominent TV shows and small roles in movies like the 1995 sci-fi horror movie “Species.” However, his easily most prominent role — “Night Court” included — has been Dr. Wilhelm Rolf on the daytime drama “The Days of our Lives.” He played the role from 1995 to 2021 on 495 episodes.
Ellen Foley (Billie Young)
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Ellen Foley is one of entertainment’s rare multi-talents who can shine both as a sitcom star and as a popular singer. A one-season character on “Night Court,” she’s a major presence during Season 2 as public defender Billie Young, who becomes close with Judge Harry T. Stone (Harry Anderson). When she joined the show, she was already a highly popular singer and musical performer. Foley said that she particularly enjoyed working with Selma Diamond, who played Selma Hacker.
“Selma Diamond was fantastic!” she told Bay Area Reporter.” She was so funny and so acerbic. I remember her actually being supportive of me. I was in LA in a situation with a boyfriend in New York, and she goes, “What are you doing? You’re Ellen Foley!” I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right Selma Diamond, I am Ellen Foley!”
Apart from “Night Court,” Foley is well known for her work with rocker Meat Loaf and his collaborator Jim Steinman. She got to know them in the mid-1970s and went on to collaborate on several Meat Loaf classics — including the famous duet “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” “Of course I was so excited because I had never sung on a record before, and I loved [Meat Loaf and Steinman], and I loved it,” she said of the song in an interview with Variety. “But what did I know? People always say, ‘Did you think it was going to be a big hit?’ It’s like: Beats me. I just thought it was brilliant and fantastic, and it fulfilled me, singing the music. That’s what I knew.”
Denice Kumagai (Quon Le Duc)
Quon Le Duc, who eventually becomes Quon Le Robinson, is a prominent recurring “Night Court” character who marries Charles Robinson’s Mac Robinson for visa convenience reasons, but their relationship ultimately becomes much deeper. She’s played by Denice Kumagai, and appears on a total of 17 episodes — debuting on Season 2 and appearing on occasion up until Season 9.
Along with her “Night Court” fame, Kumagai has made history as the co-founder of the first Asian-American improvisation group in the U.S., Cold Tofu, which has been around since 1981. “Our goals were to give Asian Americans a vehicle to express themselves as comedians, to explore their cultural backgrounds through comedy, and to present life in America from a new perspective.” Kumagai described the origins of Cold Tofu in an interview with Discover Nikkei. She has also acted in a number of TV and movie projects apart from “Night Court,” including Aunt June on “Gilmore Girls” and Kim in the Hulk Hogan action comedy “Suburban Commando.”