Larry David Bids Farewell to Twelve Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Great Seasons of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM

Q: Did you ever imagine when you did the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm that it would last anything like this long? LD: No, I mean, even after the show got picked up for a season my agent said to me, “Hey, you can do ten seasons of this.” I said, “Are you out of your mind? Ten seasons?! Are you crazy??” And now here we are, twelve seasons later.   Q: At what point did you decide that this was going to be the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm? LD: I can’t remember. I think before we wrote it, I knew it was going to be the last one.  We’ve been at it a long time. I’m getting old, as is the cast, and nature has a way of telling us to stop.   Q: But you said before after various seasons that it might be the last one only to change your mind. Like at the end of season five when you died and went to heaven… LD: Yeah, exactly. I did think it might be the end. I’m always afraid I can’t write another one. So, I did think it was the last one, but this time it IS the last one.   Q: You’re not changing your mind? LD: No, I’m not changing my mind.   Q: And did you have a clear idea of how the show would end? LD: Well yeah, we knew where we were going. After we wrote the first one.   Q: Tracey Ullman is back as Irma Kostroski for a few episodes… LD: Yes, she’s in a couple of episodes. She’s brilliant.   Q: And did you bring her back because you wanted to see more of her and you thought the audience wanted to see more of her, too? LD: Well, the audience might want to see more of her, but Larry on the show wants to see much less of her. [laughs]   Q: And how does Tracey Ullman feel about being the embodiment of Larry’s absolute physical disgust? LD: I think she loves it.  She embraces it.  Working with her has been one of the highlights of the series, for me…working with her.   Q: When you wrote that character did you have her in mind? LD: I didn’t. But after it was done, I remembered that she played Betty Friedan in this television show [‘Mrs. America’]. And I remember thinking that yeah, that’s kind of what this character should be like…   Q: No one can ever accuse you of avoiding the big issues of our time, and you have a scene involving a trans character in one episode, for example. Do you think you can get away with almost anything because the tone of the show is so playful? LD: It’s just a question of how you handle stuff. When you see something funny, you forget how you’re supposed to think.   Q: You famously write an outline for each episode and the dialogue is then improvised. But has the way you write the show changed at all from season 1 to now? LD: The outlines are much longer now. And I used to write them by myself and then for a couple of seasons I wrote with Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel. And then since season nine, I’ve been writing them exclusively with Jeff Schaffer.   Q: And are there specific lines in the script you write or is it really all improvised on the day? LD: Well, there’ll be lines in the outline that we come up with that we like and that we feel we should say at some point. But to tell you the truth, a lot of times I’ll be in make-up and I don’t even know what we’re shooting. And so I’ll say to somebody, “Can I read an outline? What are we doing?”  And that’s as much thought as I put into it. It just makes it more spontaneous and more fun to try and make it up on the spot. But in every scene, we have to move the story along, too. So there are a lot of points that have to be addressed. And the cast is really good at moving the story along.   Q: There are many hilarious scenes at the golf club this season. Are you actually any good at golf? LD: No, I’m very mediocre, as I am at most things. And I’m not being modest. It’s too hard. And it’s bad for a marriage.   Q: Susie’s outfits seem more extreme than ever before. Is that deliberate? LD: In the beginning I would try and supervise the outfits to some degree. The costume designer would show me something and I’d go, ‘No, no, it’s too much… too much’. But over the years, they’ve worn me down and now I just let them do what they want. I gave up!   Q: There are some scenes with Richard Lewis this season that get even deeper into that friendship than ever… did it feel that way to you? LD: In season 11 when we were at the political rally, arguing about something idiotic, and Tracey Ullman was sitting behind us and I said [to Richard], “When are you going to die?” I mean, there’s nobody else in the world I could have said that to. It just came out in the scene. And because we’re so close and we’ve known each other so long, it’s just the kind of friendship where you can say anything and not have to worry that you’re going to hurt the person’s feelings. So, we get to do things like that, and it just makes the show better. And you can see how tight we are during our scenes, right?   Q: Yeah totally. LD: We have that friendship rhythm.   Q: Since it’s the last season, let’s look back a bit on the whole history of the show. First, do you have a favourite episode? LD: Um, yeah, I can tell you some of my real favourites. Well, certainly the “Palestinian Chicken” episode.   Q: That episode has new resonance now… LD: Yes, yes it does. And I love “The Doll” which was early on. “The Ski Lift” is a real favourite of mine, especially when I had to pretend to be an Orthodox Jew and I was talking Hebrew gibberish. And then when I was pretending to be Susie’s husband, that was a lot of fun to shoot. When I was up on the ski lift with her [the character Rachel] and she wanted me to jump – I enjoyed that. And that was also the one with the big vagina. That was all in one show! So that’s a particular favourite of mine. I love “The Ugly Section” as well. I just think that’s really funny. I love the Bill Buckner episode. I don’t know if you know Bill Buckner’s history. He’s the baseball player who lost the world series for his team after dropping a fly ball and they really gave him a hard time. And that was an idea by a writer in Chicago who died a few years ago named Pat McNally: that the baby is thrown out the window and Buckner catches the baby. That was a great idea. I love that show. But there are so many…   Q: And you have a favourite guest star? LD: Well Tracey [Ullman] was pretty great. But I don’t like to do a list like that just in case I make other people feel bad. See, I’m a sensitive guy!   Q: OK but let me ask about a couple of guest stars in particular. Like Salman Rushdie… LD: Oh yeah he was great! And that’s another thing: you don’t know how he’s going to do, but the show is written for him. So you just do it and hope it works. And hey, there was The Producers episode with Mel Brooks. Three or four shows were written that season before I even asked Mel if he would do it. Because if he had said “No, I don’t want to do it,” I would have been doing “Fiddler on the Roof” instead of “The Producers”!   Q: Do you ever watch old episodes back? LD: No. Because I’ve seen them countless times when we’re editing. So it would be odd. It would be an ego run amok!   Q: Was it emotional for you when you filmed the final scene? LD: No. It was for a lot of people. But not for me. There’s something obviously wrong with me.   Q: Of course. Did you make a speech? LD: No, I didn’t say anything. Other people spoke but I didn’t.   Q: When filming was over how did you feel about the whole thing? LD: Nothing out of the ordinary.   Q: Finally, do you know what you’re going to do next? LD: I really don’t know what I’m going to do, honestly.  I have an office and it can’t just go to waste.  As I told someone, when I was in college and people asked me what I was going to do when I got out, I said, “Something will turn up.” That’s how I feel now.