'I Canceled Myself Out': Michael Richards Reflects on 'Exodus From Show Business' After 2006 Racist Tirade

Michael Richards admitted he's in a better place today than in 2006 when he went viral for going on a racist tirade on a comedy club audience member that heckled him at the time.

"Anger had a hold of me," he told Hoda Kotb on the Today show on Tuesday, June 4. "I canceled myself out. Take an exodus, get away from show business and see what the heck is going on inside me to have been so despicable that night, losing my cool and hurting people."

"Oh, the difference... [I'm] probably more aware of myself. Anger, looking at it very closely, it's something that's always with us, certainly with me," he continued of how he's changed.

Richards, 74, was asked if he made amends following the incident, which led him to retreat from showbiz.

"I think so," he said. "Certainly getting to a place where I could forgive myself because I have to move on and be true blue about that."

Richards, whose memoir Entrances and Exits was released on June 3, also spoke about his cancer battle.

"I thought I was going to go, really, I had given into that," Richards, who recently revealed he thought he was going to die from the disease, shared. "Then I found out that if we move fast enough, we could get at the cancer, and I had a great surgeon at Cedar Sinai in Los Angeles."

"Oh my, I made it, you know, I beat it. And that certainly motivated me to get at the book because I went through a big review of my life," he said of the tome, adding that he hopes people realize he's only "human."

"There is a good, bad and an ugly coursing through all these things," the actor added. "The entrances and the exits, what I come into, what I come out of, always so ongoing, a coming and a going. And just discovering myself along the way, it's really a pleasure, it is hard work though."

Never miss a story — sign up for the OK! newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what OK! has to offer. It’s gossip too good to wait for!

As OK! previously reported, Richards revealed he received the stage 1 diagnosis after a checkup, which showed he had elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels.

He ended up getting surgery, which might have saved his life.

“I thought, well, this is my time. I’m ready to go,” he told People in an interview published on Thursday, May 23. “But then my son came to mind just a few seconds later, and I heard myself saying, ‘I’ve got a 9-year-old, and I’d like to be around for him. Is there any way I can get a little more life going?'”

"It had to be contained quickly," he recalled. "I had to go for the full surgery. If I hadn't, I probably would have been dead in about eight months."