Comedian Caroline Rhea plays the Palladium Saturday

In airports, in the neighborhood grocery store or after a PTA event at her daughter’s school, comedian and actress Caroline Rhea always gets recognized from the 1996-2003 series Sabrina the Teenage Witch; for all seven seasons, she starred as Sabrina’s dotty aunt Hildegarde Spellman. “I’m called Aunt Hilda every day,” Rhea explains.

Fame, of course, is a fickle thing, as she is constantly reminded: “Today at Pilates this woman said ‘Oh my God, you’re so funny. I haven’t seen you on TV in a while.’”

Rhea co-headlines The Comics of Late-Night TV Saturday at the Palladium Theater, alongside Eddie Brill and Nick Griffin. She’s more than just a one-witch pony, however – her resume includes numerous standup specials, and regular, repeat appearances on the after-hours chat shows. She hosted the popular Biggest Loser series for three years.

She’s hosted, co-hosted and appeared on multiple game shows (more on that in a minute) and since 2007 has provided the voice of Linda Flynn-Fletcher on the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb.

The recognition factor is also high, she confesses, for the cheesy 2000 Disney Channel movie Mom’s Got a Date With a Vampire, in which she played the mom in question.

“If you look at the audience at my shows, it looks like a ‘90s Comic Con, with kids age 28 on down,” Rhea says. “And then it looks like an AARP registration event. I’m in my 50s, but I have a young daughter. I’ve done everything backwards.”

Rhea, a native Canadian, relocated to New York City in 1989 to pursue a career in standup comedy. One of her favorite bits: “My father is an obstetrician-gynecologist, but also a really big Star Wars fan. He loves it if you call him OB/GYN-obe.”

Her dad really was an OB/GYN, by the way, but the joke has been purloined into the common vernacular.

“Someone seriously stole that and put it on a T-shirt,” Rhea pretend-fumes. “And I was like ‘Do you want to see the 23 times I did it on Conan?”

Daughter Ava recently turned 14. “She’s my muse, she really is,” Rhea confesses. “She’s so hilarious. Today she asked me on the way to school, ‘Do you think we’re at all alike?’ I said ‘Yes, I think we’re alike in many ways.’ She goes ‘Yeah, I don’t.’

“I said ‘Well, we’re both really funny.’ She says ‘Yeah, I’m funnier.’ And I said ‘See!?’”

On those occasions where some sort of punishment is called for, Rhea explains, she’ll make Ava watch her struggle with something technological, like remembering a password or programming her phone.

“Being a comedian with a 14-year-old, it’s basically like the heckler followed me home from the club.”

A self-described child of the ‘70s, Rhea was – and is – obsessed with TV game shows. “I’m an Aires,” she says. “I’m highly competitive but I didn’t know it until I started playing games.”

They have always loomed large for her. “I have these really weird omens. When I moved to New York to become a comedian, every time I would see Soupy Sales, something good would happen. I saw Soupy Sales all the time. He became my good luck charm.

“And the first celebrity I ever saw up close was Gene Rayburn. On the Upper East Side. He was getting on an elevator with me. And he was so tall! I was starstruck and couldn’t speak.”

Rayburn was the avuncular host of The Match Game, one of the country’s longest-running game shows. Rhea was a panelist on the 2016-2021 revival of the program, hosted by Alec Baldwin. Before that, she was the “center square” on a revival of Hollywood Squares.

“You’re always with other comedians!” she gushes. “Hollywood Squares was like going to summer camp every weekend.”

There was a time, says Rhea – just after her daughter was born – she gave seriously thought to putting standup comedy on the shelf. “Because no club is as interesting as she is … but when you really do want to do something in your life, it always comes back to you. It’s like true love. It returns.”

Every time she’s busy with a project, committed to one studio or another, she finds time to get on the road for a few nights and flex those standup comedy muscles.

“I’m one of those weirdo standups where it’s how I process my life,” Rhea says. “I’m depressed if I don’t do it.”

Click here for a conversation with comedian Eddie Brill, who’s also performing Saturday at the Palladium.

Tickets are available here.