In May 2018, the cast and crew of long-running hit sitcom Seinfeld celebrated the 20th anniversary of the finale being aired by giving an interview to Variety. They discussed the return of Larry David (who of course went on to make another hit comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm) and many guest stars for the special episode, and talked about the legacy of the series since.
Executive producer Alec Berg, who now works on HBO comedy series Barry, discusses the impact of Larry David leaving the show and making the final two seasons without him. “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. We lived and ate and slept and hung out at the office.”
Berg continues; “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.”
Jason Alexander, who plays the legendary George Costanza talks about huddling with Seinfeld, Dreyfuss, and Richards before filming the finale in front of the live studio audience. “Jerry said, ‘For the rest of our lives when anybody thinks of one of us, they will think of the four of us, and I can’t think of any people that I would rather have that be true of.’ And as we all began to weep over the fact that Jerry had said that, that’s when they started calling our names and we had to go out and pretend that everything’s just hunky dory.”
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