JUNE 3, 2015
(from Larry David interview, page 323)
Howard: When you first took the role on Seinfeld, you didn’t know you were playing Larry David.
Jason: No.
Howard: So you kind of played it like Woody Allen.
Jason: Yeah.
Howard: You did that for a while, and then you realized, “I’m playing Larry David, aren’t I?”
Jason: We ran into an early episode where nothing made sense to me. The situation seemed ludicrous. I wish I could remember the episode—it was in the first eight, nine, ten of them. But I remember we did the table read and I went to Larry and said, “Larry, please help me. This would never happen to anybody. But if it did, no one on the planet would react like this.”
Howard: And he said, “What are you talking about? This happened to me. And this is exactly what I did.”
Jason: And then the bells went off. I went, “Ohhhh, okay.” Then I just started really observing him and trying to pull as much of him into me as I could.
Howard: You were aggressive about getting that part.
Jason: They had apparently seen a lot of people in LA.
Howard: I have the list of people. Wanna hear it?
Jason: I’ve heard some. Some of them are pretty famous.
Howard: Larry Miller, excellent comedian. Brad Hall, who was on Saturday Night Live. David Alan Grier. Nathan Lane. And Steve Buscemi. They reportedly all auditioned for the role of George.
Jason: There are more. Paul Shaffer.
Howard: No kidding?
Jason: Danny DeVito was offered it at one point. Chris Rock was offered it at one point. But for whatever reason they didn’t take it. So they had seen all these people, and couldn’t quite find it, and they called a casting director and said, “Just put some theater actors on tape.” All I had were a couple pages of the script, which read like a Woody Allen film. I had no context for it. Hence, I did the glasses and [imitates Woody Allen] as blatant a Woody Allen as I could do. I swear to God, I did Woody Allen. With the stuttering. And I said, “Oh, I’ll never see it again. I made the tape and that was just an exercise.” The truth was nobody from New York ever got a TV gig that way. You’re not meeting the producers, you’re not meeting the star. A couple weeks later I got a call from NBC. “Yes, please, we’d love to fly you out and screen-test you with Jerry.”