Colin Mochrie
Colin Mochrie Credit: Helen Tansey

This May, the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival marks 35 years of supporting unjuried, uncensored, unbelievably weird entertainment, but the celebrations really start this Monday, April 6, with the Fab Fringe Fundraiser at Plaza Live featuring Whose Line Is It Anyway? star Colin Mochrie. I recently spoke with the improv comedy icon ahead of the show about everything from his start in the business to why supporting Fringe is so important to him.

Born in Scotland but raised in Canada, Mochrie was attending theater school in Vancouver when he saw an exhibition of Theatresports, an early form of competitive improvisation created by Keith Johnstone in the late 1970s. 

“All of my friends were doing this, and I was watching, and I thought, ‘Oh, this looks like it would be a lot of fun to do,’” recalls Mochrie, who soon joined an improv troupe. 

“When we first started, nobody knew what improv was. We’d run into the McDonald’s that was conveniently right next door and say to people, ‘Come see our show,’ and they’d go, ‘What is it?’ We’d go, ‘Well, we don’t know yet. You have to yell things.’ And then within the year, it was the cult show to see. There were lineups around the block.”

Early on, Mochrie formed a friendship with Ryan Stiles, who also became a Whose Line mainstay. When they met, Mochrie says that Stiles “was a stand-up [comic] and if I’m going to be honest, not a great one,” but after a mutual friend brought Stiles to an improv show, the pair “just immediately clicked on stage for whatever reason,” and then through that became lifelong friends. 

After performing at Expo 86, Mochrie followed Stiles to Toronto and joined Second City, where he was hired by the woman who would become his wife. (“It was one-stop shopping for me.”) When the British version of Whose Line began, the producers recruited Second City performers, but although Mochrie eventually appeared in more episodes of the U.S. and U.K. series than anyone other than Stiles, he bombed his initial auditions. 

“It was just blind luck and getting more chances than I probably deserved,” he says. “I psyched myself out; all the things that got me hired, I didn’t do. I was reticent, I was hanging back.”  

Fortunately, Stiles convinced the producers to give him another chance, and he became a recurring guest — “They would bring me over to England and say, ‘We’re giving you two shows,’ and then I’d end up doing all of them” — before being bumped to regular cast member for the final British season. “It was good, because it made me push to make myself get noticed [and] be the best I could be. I think it helps not to have everything kind of handed to you, although now I believe everything should be handed to me,” he jokes. “I put in my time.”

Along with Stiles, Mochrie also has fond memories of improvising with Orlando native Wayne Brady, whom Mochrie recalls “came in and it was like, ‘All right, who the hell is this guy?’ … The songs he could do, the impressions; he could just do everything. It was fascinating to watch, because I’d never been part of a moment where you go, ‘Oh, there is a future star; a star is about to be born, and I’m going to be to the left of them.’”

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Whose Line Is It Anyway? has received some criticism for popularizing short-form improv at the expense of other types, which Mochrie doesn’t entirely disagree with as a fellow fan of long-form. “I always said, Whose Line is an introduction to improv,” he says. “It’s like vaudeville; this is the basics [but] there’s many, many different ways of doing improv, and I always felt in some ways we got shortchanged.”

Outside of the improv world, Mochrie has made memorable scripted on-screen appearances, ranging from The Drew Carey Show to Jane White Is Sick & Twisted, a cult comedy in which he plays a patron of transvestite prostitutes. “My agent said, ‘This is something a little outside of what you might be known for,’” says Mochrie. “I always love when I get a chance to do something that scares me; it takes me out of my comfort zone, but also sort of turns expectations of what people will see from me.”

Theme park fans may also recognize Mochrie from the Bakery Tour at Disney California Adventure, where he hosts (with Rosie O’Donnell) one of DCA’s few remaining opening-day attractions. “I don’t think I’ve ever taken the Bakery Tour,” Mochrie confesses, “although you’d think on the 25th anniversary they’d send me some bread or something?” He is an attraction fan, having filmed inside Disneyland with his daughter and “drank around the world” at EPCOT with Drew Carey and the Whose Line cast. 

“I got my drink at Canada, and I pretty much nursed it throughout the rest of the tour, because also it’s really hot. By the end, people were literally crawling to the next pavilion. That night we were booked to go to one of the Cirque du Soleil shows, and they were all asleep in the front row.”

Mochrie’s experience with Fringe Festivals goes back to performing in Edinburgh in the 1990s and includes Edmonton and Vancouver, but this will be his first foray with Orlando Fringe. He was brought here by local performer Chase Padgett, who will join Mochrie on the Plaza stage alongside Rob Ward, Joel Warren, Emily Fontano, Robby Pigott, DK Reinemer and pianist Ashley Evans. Of Padgett, Mochrie says, “Every show he does just kills me. It’s just so beautifully done; it’s so emotional, and there’s so much you can learn.”

“My favorite thing is working with people I don’t know, because I have to listen. I can’t assume I would I know what any of these people are going to do, so I’m there to support [and] make the scene the best it can be,” Mochrie says about performing with younger improvisers. “The other people in the cast, I’m sure, grew up watching me, so that’s sort of weird when, like, Mr. Rogers comes and works with you, [but I tell them] the only difference between you and me is I managed to get on television, on a show that showcased the one thing I can do.”

Even though Mochrie claims he “truly has no idea” exactly what the Fab Fringe frivolities will entail, don’t expect many partisan polemics. “We’ve actually been saying at the beginning of our shows, we’re not taking anything political because we found it divided our audience in half,” he says. “We’re just there to help you actually forget what’s going on in the world for a couple of hours. I feel that’s probably a safer way to go, and probably something that’s more needed.”

Despite that, Mochrie is proud to proclaim that “Fringe is important, theater is important,” and emphasizes that Orlando Fringe’s support of the LGBTQ+ community is a cause that’s especially close to Mochrie’s heart. 

“I have a trans daughter who is one of the loveliest people I know, [and] there’s no reason people should be ashamed of who they love [or] who they are,” says Mochrie. “No matter what your sexual orientation is or gender, everybody wants to be happy.”

Fab Fringe Fundraiser: 7 p.m. Monday, April 6; Plaza Live, 425 N. Bumby Ave.; orlandofringe.org; $60.

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This article appears in April 1-7, 2026.