Fresh off Kansas City Big Slick, David Koechner goes to the dogs — and ‘Dating Game’

What David Koechner looks for in TV and movie roles is pretty simple.

“I love to work, and so if I get an opportunity, I’m probably going to take it,” he says. “If you look at my resume, I don’t turn things down. I have five kids and they want to eat, so, yes, that’s the global outlook.”

This summer, TV viewers can see a lot of this native of Tipton, Missouri, one of the hometown hosts of the annual Big Slick fundraiser.

First, you can see Koechner in his new hosting gig on A&E Network’s “America’s Top Dog” — a job he got through a Big Slick connection. The show returns for its second season with back-to-back episodes at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

The comic actor also makes an appearance on ABC’s “Celebrity Dating Game.” The show airs at 9 p.m. Mondays, and his episode is set for July 26.

Koechner is in the midst of a divorce from his wife, Leigh, who grew up in Overland Park. He went on “Celebrity Dating Game” “as a lark,” he says. He currently has a girlfriend who is not in the entertainment business (“She has no interest and I don’t even know if she’s seen most of the stuff I’ve been in. Kindness is her game”). He says she supported his stint on “Celebrity Dating Game.”

“It’s a hypothetical, fantastical entertainment,” Koechner says. “It’s a whole lot of fun and nothing else.”

“Celebrity Dating Game” executive producer Charles Wachter has acknowledged that some celebrities, like Koechner, sign on just for fun while others are actually in search of a potential partner.

“Just like in life, people come to this show with their own expectations,” Wachter said told TV Insider. “Some are genuinely looking for love.”

Dog show

Koechner is perhaps best known for playing jerks Champ Kind in the “Anchorman” movies (co-starring with fellow Big Slick host Paul Rudd) and Todd Packer on NBC’s “The Office.”

Although he’s a fan of dogs — Koechner’s family has a goldendoodle and a Labradoodle — Koechner says he was sold on joining “America’s Top Dog” because of the competition series’ returning co-host, Curt Menefee.

“He’s got such a fascinating and facile and brilliant mind,” Koechner says. “I could just talk to him for hours. And I literally did.”

The two met about four years ago during Big Slick. KC native Rob Riggle, one of Koechner’s fellow co-hosts at the annual fundraiser for Children’s Mercy hospital, used to appear with Menefee on “Fox NFL Sunday” and recruited him to be a celebrity guest.

“There’s one particular event we do on Saturday mornings where we go visit the kids at the hospital and then we take a 40-minute long bus ride to a bowling alley, where we do another fundraising event,” Koechner says during a phone call from Los Angeles earlier this month. “He and I sat beside each other and had a wonderful chat.”

Menefee was again a Big Slick guest earlier this month, though the event was all online for the second year in a row because of the pandemic.

Koechner had intended to return home three times last summer, including for his 40th high school reunion and for the 60th anniversary of his family’s business (livestock trailers for turkeys). The pandemic put the kibosh on those plans. He’s finally coming back July 4th weekend for a family reunion at Table Rock Lake.

In the eight-episode second season of “America’s Top Dog,” Koechner says there are occasional blunders – like a dog stopping mid-race to relieve itself – but generally, he says, “these dogs are and the trainers, they’ve got such an amazing bond. And clearly they’ve got hours and hours and hours of training and discipline. So it’s pretty fascinating to watch.”

In each one-hour “America’s Top Dog” episode, dogs and their handlers race through a canine obstacle course designed to test their speed, agility, teamwork, and trust. Koechner says the dogs and their humans do get an opportunity to spend some time on the show’s obstacle course before they race against the clock, and he was intrigued to see how facile the dogs were in an essentially new environment.

“The most fascinating thing for me was when the trainer and the dog are really super in sync,” he says. “That’s the thing to really get your pulse racing, because you want them to stay on track. And sometimes you’ll have the dog and trainer perfectly in sync, and then it’ll just kind of go off (course).”

Koechner says he always had a dog growing up in Tipton, about 120 miles southeast of Kansas City.

“Usually you’d take in a stray dog, and that becomes your dog,” he says. “That happened twice when I was younger. A dog wanders onto your property and that becomes the family dog.”

Koechner coming up

Koechner filmed both season two and three of the show at the same time, making 16 episodes over 14 days. It marked one of the actor/comedian’s first jobs after COVID-19 forced TV and film productions worldwide to shut down in March 2020.

He rode out the pandemic in Sherman Oaks, California, returning to work in late August 2020 on a movie in Oklahoma City before he reported to the “America’s Top Dog” set in Simi Valley, California.

Koechner’s most recent regular role on a scripted TV series was on the two-season, middle America-set ABC comedy “Bless This Mess,” which was canceled in spring 2020. Koechner says he suspects the show was a victim of the pandemic.

“My assumption is that had COVID not hit, we definitely would have been back. But because we’re a little bit more expensive, because we’re shooting on location and ABC is owned by Disney and Disney was bleeding money. All their theme parks were shut down, their cruise lines were shut down. So they had to look seriously at budgets,” he says. “It’s too bad because I love that show. The writing was just fantastic. And the cast, oh, my God, I loved all of those people so much.”

Although he’s received no phone call yet, Koechner expects to continue his recurring role on ABC’s “The Goldbergs” in the fall. And while there’s been no talk of an “Anchorman 3” so far, he recently finished shooting “National Champions” in New Orleans. The film, starring Stephan James and J.K. Simmons, is about college football players who go on strike until they start getting paid.

“College athletics is a $14 billion a year industry, and all of this money is being made on the backs of the students,” Koechner says. “The beauty of the script is it doesn’t make the decision for you. It’s a really remarkable movie.”

Koechner voices the dad character in the upcoming animated movie “Marmaduke,” based on the comic strip. He also voices characters on HBO Max’s “Close Enough,” Netflix’s “The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants” and on TBS’ “American Dad.”

“Every medium has a specific hierarchy in terms of the collaboration,” he explains. “In film, you get to collaborate probably the most in my experience, depending on the director. TV is the writer’s medium. You’ve got 22 minutes (of program time in a half-hour comedy) so you can’t add things because then somebody else gets subtracted. So that’s a more disciplined medium. With voiceover it’s rare that they’re looking for some other input. They generally have a very specific idea of what they want.

“This is almost corny but you kind of become the director’s instrument. You’re playing the notes the way they see it in their head. I think I’m a woodwind,” Koechner says, beginning to chuckle. “That’s probably wrong, I’m more like a trombone or whatever the loudest brass instrument is. What’s louder than a tuba?”

Freelance writer Rob Owen: RobOwenTV@gmail.com or on Facebook and Twitter as RobOwenTV.

Where to catch Koechner this summer

David Koechner is the new co-host on “America’s Top Dog.” Season two debuts with back-to-back episodes at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

He’ll also make an appearance on “Celebrity Dating Game,” which airs at 9 p.m. Mondays on ABC. His episode is tentatively set for July 26.

This story was originally published June 27, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fresh off Kansas City Big Slick, David Koechner goes to the dogs — and ‘Dating Game’."