Seinfeld's Executive Producer Revealed The Show Turned Into A Nightmare Behind The Scenes When Larry
Seinfeld is considered one of the Best-Written TV Series of All Time. It’s no wonder that even today, over two decades after its series finale aired, fans still love Seinfeld. The show’s humor and iconic characters still attract old and new generations.
Although Jerry Seinfeld did a great job playing the lead on the show, Seinfeld wouldn’t be what it is without Larry David. The co-creator of the show was the inspiration for one of the show’s most iconic characters, George Costanza (played by Jason Alexander), and also came up with some of the most hilarious lines and plots on the show.
Despite the success of the series, David left Seinfeld after its seventh season. Luckily for the fans, he came back to write the series finale, but doing so was a complete nightmare for him.
Jerry Seinfeld And Larry David Created Seinfeld Together
Rumor has it that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David met through a mutual friend, comedian Carol Leifer, who later became a writer for Seinfeld. Leifer was gifted some jokes from David, which she was meant to read at her birthday party. Being too drunk to read, she asked Seinfeld to do it for her and he absolutely killed it. Upon realizing they had a sense of humor, David and Seinfeld became quick friends and hoped to collaborate together in the future.
In the late 1980s, Seinfeld was presented with the opportunity to create a show for NBC. He asked David to help him write the pilot. “Larry and I were so good together, if we both thought something was funny, that was good enough for us,” Seinfeld told David Letterman of their shared philosophy. “If it can get through those two filters, and we both think that’s funny, I wouldn’t even care if it wasn’t funny.
In 1989, they presented The Seinfeld Chronicles to a group of NBC executives. But the execs weren’t fully sold on the premise of the show and didn’t think it would be successful. So, they decided to air Seinfeld in the "garbage dump theater" summer slot without thinking much about it. To their surprise, viewers loved the pilot and Seinfeld would go on to become the network’s most successful sitcom for a whole decade.
Larry David Left Seinfeld After Its Seventh Season
After the seventh season of Seinfeld aired, Larry David announced he was parting away from the show. Fans were shocked and many believed that his departure was due to personal problems with Jerry or the rest of the cast, but this was far from the truth. There were also rumors that David threatened to quit Seinfeld every season and would have to be talked into staying.
Two years after his departure from the show, David revealed why he decided to leave Seinfeld for good.
"I had been there for seven years, and that's a long time to suffer the way I do in my daily life. Seven years is a long time for someone to executive produce a show like that," he told Charlie Rose.
The interviewer asked if he had quit because he was burnt out or feared he wouldn’t be able to come up with new material as the seasons went on. "No, it wasn't burnout. I had plenty of ideas. It wasn't that. I just felt like I was ready. I had done that and now I wanted to try something else."
The quality of Seinfeld significantly declined in the seasons following David's departure, especially for the character of George Costanza, which was based on David. Despite this, the show remained a fan favorite till the end.
Filming Seinfeld Became A Nightmare After Larry David Left
Despite leaving Seinfeld after season 7, Larry David maintained a good relationship with the show’s co-creator, Jerry Seinfeld, and the cast. He even continued to do voice acting for George Steinbrenner and later returned to write the show's controversial season 9 finale.
In an interview for Variety, Alec Berg admitted that the dynamics significantly changed when David left. A lot of the writers grew fatigued following his departure and also felt the pressure.
“We were so exhausted. The last two years, Larry had left. And so a bunch of us were trying to do what Larry did, 24 episodes a year. And the level of exposure. …Something like 33 million people a week were watching the show, so if we screwed it up, it would have been a pretty massively embarrassing screw-up."
Berg continues, "We lived and ate and slept and hung out at the office. And there was a day during the last season when I looked at a calendar, and it had been 59 days since I had [last] not come into the office. I went another two or three weeks before I had one day off. And at that point, having a day off was worthless, because you would just sit at home and twitch. It was a totally unsustainable level of work.”
David was able to alleviate some pressure during his return for the finale.
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