Hollywood legend’s secret ‘torture’ behind the scenes on Seinfeld
Seinfeld co-creator Larry David reportedly found working on the sitcom “torturous”, according to a new biography that goes behind the scenes on the ’90s hit.
“[David] would rather spend a year in prison than do another season of Seinfeld,” Blake J. Harris, author of the authorised biography Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, revealed on a recent episode of Obsessed: The Podcast.
Jerry Seinfeld and actor Larry David co-created the hit sitcom Seinfeld in the 1980s. Stephen Lovekin/Getty
He claimed it was “torturous” for David to run the show alongside so-creator Jerry Seinfeld, especially as the sitcom kept gaining popularity over time.
“That torture largely came from the pressure [David] put on himself to come up with good ideas, which is a constant theme in the book.
“To him, every second of every episode needed to hit a certain calibre of quality and trying to clear that bar, day after day after day, seemed unsustainable.”
Harris also quoted one of David’s Seinfeld colleagues as telling The Hollywood Reporter that the showrunner was “so consumed with perfection that doing episodes is as painful for him as passing kidney stones”.
He revealed that, while writing David’s biography, the Hollywood legend worried they’d focused too much on the anxiety he experienced while working on the sitcom.
Harris disagreed, adding that although David had great memories of Seinfeld, it also took a toll on him and fans would want to know about that side of the story.
David enjoyed a rare reunion with Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus last December, which sent fans of the most successful sitcom ever made into a frenzy more than 25 years after it went off-air.
Seinfeld’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David reunited last year. Instagram/@jerryseinfeld
Louis-Dreyfus recently opened up about tensions during filming, telling the Friends Keep Secrets podcast last month: “It’s hard to do anything really well, and it takes a lot of work, and you’re gonna butt heads. Sometimes there was an argument.”
Fortunately, any tension appears to have resolved two decades later.
Earlier this year, a different Seinfeld star found himself in hot water over an “inappropriate” comedy sketch that resurfaced from 2012.
Jason Alexander was called out for the skit he filmed with former child star Courtney Stodden, now 31, when she was just 17.
Jason Alexander landed in hot water over a resurfaced sketch with Courtney Stodden. Getty
“During this comedy sketch, Jason Alexander repeatedly rubbed his phone across my breasts while saying there was ‘no signal’ in my head but ’plenty of signal in my chest,” she wrote in an Instagram post about the skit.
“Later in the sketch, [his character] joked that when I turned 18 he’d like to take me behind the couch and ‘have his way’ with me.”
Alexander later apologised and donated $US15,000 ($21,400) to Unchained at Last, a charity dedicated to ending the legal practice of child marriage in the United States.
