JEFF GARLIN: “I remember saying, ‘That would be really great.’ [Laughs] What else am I gonna say?!?! ‘I think you’re making a huge mistake? We may get a lot more viewers?’”
On possibly passing up big bucks if the gang had held out for a traditional “reunion show”:
JASON ALEXANDER: “I’ve always said one of the reasons that a Seinfeld reunion would never happen is because nobody could afford it. Had this been a real reunion we would have wanted the gates of heaven to open.”
On where we find the characters in the reunion-show scenes:
JASON ALEXANDER: “I don’t think it connects to anything from where we left off, and that might be its brilliance. We always thought about ‘Well, what would we do next? Are we going to be able to get out of jail?’ and this one is light years beyond that already.”
On reuniting in Curb’s improvisational world:
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS: “I had a little bit of anxiety about it, because we’ve worked together as a group with scripted material, and improvising is a different beat. So I was kind of curious to see how that was going to work out, but it worked…. Even though we’d never done that before as a group, we did have the advantage of knowing each other very well. So that really was lovely. It does give you a leg up.”
MICHAEL RICHARDS: “It’s a different kind of magic because it’s not really Seinfeld. But Curb has a lot of magic to it, and when Jerry and Larry are together, I know we’re going places.”
On being back on Stage 19, where the old Seinfeld sets had been taken out of storage and updated:
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS: “It was a little bit breathtaking, and then after about three minutes, it was as if we had gone on a Christmas hiatus, and we were back at work again. Really, it was that familiar.”
MICHAEL RICHARDS: “The only thing that was missing was on the back wall of Jerry’s apartment in the hall where you enter from, I had written “Funny” in red paint on the wall. And that wasn’t on the wall. It was missing. But we didn’t need any touch-up. That’s what was so profound. It just all came together pretty easily.”
JASON ALEXANDER: “It was so bizarre, I can’t even describe it. It negated the idea that time had passed at all, and I was actually grateful that some of the elements of the apartment set were different, [so] it wasn’t a complete mindf—.”
LARRY DAVID: “It’s like going back into your past to visit a place where you went to school or where you spent time — your house, your apartment, whatever. Any experience like that will have an effect on you. I did go back to my apartment in Brooklyn last summer with my kids. I even knocked on the door. Thank God nobody answered.”
On Larry David’s idea to invite Seinfeld writers and crew members to serve as extras during the table-read scene (which will be seen near the end of the season):
JASON ALEXANDER: “Larry wanted the people that the audience never saw in that scene because that’s where they would have been. We were an incredibly unsentimental show, both onscreen and behind the scenes. We were not touchy-feely-huggy, and that was a gesture of such enormous sentimentality, more than any other element of walking onto the set. [Bringing back] those people, our crew, the guys in the office, and the writers … was an enormously gorgeous gesture.”
LARRY DAVID: “Why not have the people who were there? And not only that, it would be a reunion of sorts as well. So it worked on a couple of levels.”
On witnessing the reunion:
CHERYL HINES: “There was electricity in the air when the Seinfeld cast was reunited for the first time. I mean, you could feel it. They seemed so happy to see each other. I remember at one point we were all sitting at this big table together, and Larry was sitting at the head of the table, and there was just such an overwhelming energy to that moment in time …. Sometimes I would be driving home and thinking, “Oh my God — I can’t believe that was my day at work.”
JEFF GARLIN: “I was blown away by how the cast stepped into it as if they had not stopped at all. It was just so natural. What was also amazing was they were all great at our style too. They just fit in perfectly.”
JERRY SEINFELD: “The fun thing about that was seeing other people like Jeff Garlin see it in person. He came over to me and said, ‘Obviously I’ve seen the show many times, but to see you four together live, standing five feet away, you can feel the magic of that combination of people. It’s really potent.’ For him to stand there and go, ‘Oh my God, I see the lightning in the bottle just watching you four do a page of dialogue together,’ was cool. It was cool to see it through his eyes.”
On how the reunion turned out:
LARRY DAVID: “It really exceeded my expectations, just in terms of how much I was going to get out of it and enjoy it and how it was going to turn out … It was a blast. It was hard to keep a straight face.”
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS: “It just feels quintessentially right in the way that Seinfeld was kind of a show that was at odds with the standard sitcom. This is at odds with your standard reunion. In all the right ways.”
JERRY SEINFELD: “I love that we managed an addition to the narrative of the show … There are some definite new elements to the story of these four people that are now part of the whole story … I thought this would be more of a stunt-type thing, but I feel like this is really part of the series now. I would call this a member in good standing with all the other episodes.”
On what Michael Richards learned from his infamous 2006 comedy-club incident:
MICHAEL RICHARDS: “The whole thing about losing one’s temper and just saying a lot of stupid stuff. The next step was, I started moving into a place of being far more joyous about living … being far more open to people in life. [Comedy clubs are] a pretty mean environment to be working in. It’s really tough. I didn’t have the skin for it. Not anymore, anyway.
JERRY SEINFELD: “It was a major life event. And I think it’s still something that is part of his life. People will remember that. But Larry and I were saying the other day that it does feel like he has really grown a lot through it, and in some ways become a better person. On that very awkward appearance on Letterman [in which Richards apologized for his actions via satellite], he talked about that he had personal work to do. And I think he did it. Because he really seems evolved from where he was. It wasn’t all for naught.”
On the possibility of doing another season of Curb:
LARRY DAVID: “I’m pretty much at the same place where I am every season at this time. So, I don’t know. And I’ve been satisfied after every season — maybe a little more so after this one, but not significantly so. But I really don’t know. I don’t like to think about it yet.”
