Susie Essman

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I'd be at the produce section in Fairway or Zay Bars, and somebody would shove the phone in my face and say, It's my husband, call him a fat fuck, you know, that kind of thing.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

On today's episode, I'm joined by one of the stars of Curb Your Enthusiasm, actor and comedian Susie Essman.

On Curb, she played Susie Green, the wife of Larry's agent, Jeff Green.

Now, if you're like me, you loved Susie's character for her no BS ways.

She's foul-mouthed, wears outrageous clothes, and isn't scared to go toe-to-toe with Larry.

Even though Susie Essman is obviously her own person, her character's fearlessness somehow reminds me of her own, how she navigated the male-dominated world of stand-up by being even more raunchy and unfiltered than her peers.

I can't wait for you to get to know her better.

And now you will.

Meet Susie Esmond.

Hi, Susie.

Hi, Ted.

I haven't seen you in months.

I know, March something, 24th or something.

Something like that, our last day.

Yeah.

Oh,

wow.

Hard.

Very hard.

You know what I love about this?

I love that I get to talk to you for an hour or whatever it is.

And

Larry's not going to interrupt us.

It's just going to be you and me.

Just you and me.

No, Jeff

coming in.

No, Larry annoying us.

Really?

Larry doesn't annoy on set because he's too, you know, focused.

Yeah, that's true.

I'll tell you, I have a whole category talking with you about how annoying is it to work with Larry David.

We could start with this.

We both had similar reactions.

Somebody asked you in some interview,

do you break up?

Do you laugh a lot on the set?

No.

No.

We're professionals.

We're professionals.

Yeah.

Exactly.

He fucks up every single take of mine, all of my best takes.

Literally, because first time he giggles, you go, oh, how sweet.

He likes what I'm doing.

And then he does ruin your next 10 takes because he won't stop giggling.

And then for me, you know, many of my takes, I'm screaming and yelling.

So by the time he stops giggling, my voice is gone.

You know, he's a pain in the ass.

He's a pain in the ass.

But I will say this.

Making Larry laugh, I think is truly, and I'm not being, you know, Pollyanna-ish.

It's one of the joys of my life is is making him laugh.

Mine too.

And luckily, I make him laugh.

Otherwise, I wouldn't have had this job all these years.

Good point.

And here's something else about Larry.

First off, obviously, we love him, adore him.

I would say that both of our careers have a lot to do with him.

Well, Ted, mine certainly.

Yours, I mean, come on.

No, we can get into that.

But he came along, Kirb came along at a time where I literally, I think I had done

a show that lasted, you know, eight, eight episodes and it was canceled.

And I sat there looking at myself going, all right,

I'm not making, I'm not amused by what I'm doing anymore.

I don't have a giggle.

And all right, no more comedy.

I'm going to just do movies and da-da-da-da.

And then along came Larry with this bizarre invitation out of the blue to come, you know, and it was like it rehabilitated me.

It did, really?

I never knew that.

Yeah.

Tell that story about the first time he showed you the stuff at Martha's Vineyard.

I think that's so funny.

Okay.

So I think we had met him, he and Laurie, the year before, and

they were friends.

And you both had houses in the vineyard.

He was renting a house.

He and Laurie were renting a house and it didn't have great reception.

So after some dinner, he's told this group of about six, eight of us that come over to the house and let me show you the,

you know, a cutting or whatever of the pilot that I'm thinking of doing for HBO.

And

we all climbed up to the top of the stairs near the attic because it was the only place that had good enough reception or whatever, Wi-Fi to be able to watch it.

And it was hot, and several of the people literally fell asleep, you know, sitting on the stairs watching this.

And I remember thinking, oh boy, boy, oof, this is, this is, I don't know, I don't think this is going to work.

And I don't, you know, but I like him so much.

What do we say as you plan, you know, how to be complimentary with something you're not thinking?

And at the end, we've all been there.

Yeah.

Mary and I kind of were looking at each other and going, I shouldn't pull Mary into.

This was my reaction.

But we both said, Larry, wonderful.

If you ever want us to play ourselves, we'd be happy to.

What an amazing thing.

And, you know, went out the door and thought nothing of it.

And then we got a call

and he said, come, come play yourselves.

And that was back in the day when

you brought your own wardrobe and pretty much put your makeup on in your car before you

walked on this.

People don't understand how low budget we were in the beginning.

We had no trailers.

We didn't have a makeup trailer.

We had nothing.

We didn't even have Port-au-Sands, Port-a-Potty things.

Yes.

Go to the bathroom before you come, Susie.

Right.

Right, right.

And we had one one makeup artist who did hair and makeup for everybody, barely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it was amazing.

And then it was really like, I got a barn, let's put on a show.

You know, that's what it felt like.

Yes.

And you'd be, you'd get the call if you were a guest star the night before.

You know, so there was no planning ahead with Larry.

Right.

And he just made the assumption everyone would want to come and he was right.

He was right.

And then I think for for your character i mean i love the evolution of you becoming pretty much starting out as his friend and then becoming the cad right

which

which i know because

i didn't even read those little outlines that we get i think most people know that larry and uh whoever he's writing with that season work on it for three months, but they take it right up to the point where they would normally write dialogue and then they don't.

So we get these little outlines that you can read or not.

And I didn't even read the outlines.

You just show up and you'd say, you walk here, you did it, and this is kind of the situation.

And one time, one season,

you know, we're going to be, you're not doing this podcast.

So this is the last question for me.

Okay.

I will finish this story.

But I was walking,

the scene was, he was talking and I'm blanking on the actress's name from Australia.

Lucy Lolis, yes.

Lucy and

Larry are standing on a corner in Brentwood outside of a dry cleaner.

And

they're talking.

And I pull up as far as I know, get out of the car, walk by them and go, hey, and into the dry cleaner.

Well, one

take, I got there too early.

So they were still finishing their little dialogue that they were having.

And what I overhear is,

and oh, God, yeah, what an asshole.

Oh, I know.

He's horrible.

And I heard it, you know, I was like, wait, what?

And I kept walking.

And then I went up to Jeff later and went, Jeff, did you, did you hear what they said?

He went, really?

You don't know that you are the asshole this season?

That's all you are the whole season for Larry?

Yeah.

It's great that you didn't know that because that, you know, then you're not playing asshole.

You're just playing, you know.

Well, you never want to be on point on anything.

Yes, that's true.

That's true.

All right, let me go back.

I have one more question I want to ask you, and then you can ask me.

See, this is deflecting, but go ahead.

No, no, no.

Just one question because I never asked you this.

Were you upset when he had you splitting up with Mary and getting together with Cheryl?

So much so that I'm going to have to couch.

in this conversation we're having how upset I was.

It was

yes, it was a very vulnerable time.

I think it was the week after

Trump won the election in 2016, I guess, was it?

And so feeling very disoriented and vulnerable.

And I show up to work to discover that, you know, we have divorced Mary and I, or we're getting a divorce or something.

Yeah.

Which I understand the legit, why story-wise they did it, I think.

But it hurt.

And I came back and had to tell Mary like this was a thing in our life, not just a story point.

Yeah.

And we got people when it was aired,

people who were friends,

or at least acquaintances that we'd had dinner with, you know, a month before,

would write these notes to us.

Oh, I...

Is it true?

I'm so sorry.

You know, it was like, what?

Mary, yeah, Mary used to say, yeah, we did.

And we decided to tell the world on the Larry Davis on curve.

That seemed the appropriate way to tell.

But it did upset me.

But there you go.

It's funny.

Well, you know, because there's such, I mean, you're Ted Danson, but you're not really Ted Danson.

You're Ted Danson on the show.

And Larry Davis, Larry David.

I'm Susie, but I'm Susie Green.

And Richard, you know what I mean?

It's all very confusing.

It is.

But I realize I'm not playing.

I'm not Ted Danson.

I am function.

My job, I think probably most of us, our function is to drive Larry into a corner so he explodes and comes out more Larry.

That's kind of

what he's doing.

But that's show Larry.

That's not real Larry.

No.

Although it's not, for me, going out to dinner with Larry used to be the same.

I would try to find some funny way to insult him and then delight if he laughed.

One last thing about laughter, then we're going to go back.

And Larry, and Larry.

Not all stand-ups are generous with their laughter.

A lot of them,

I got the football, let me run, just let me do my thing.

And they don't throw the football back.

Larry delights in you being funny.

He really does.

Yeah.

He really does.

He's one of my favorite people in the whole world.

So don't get me started on him.

All right.

We both loved Larry.

We both love to insult him.

And well, at least I do.

All right.

No, I do too.

All right.

Let me, let me, then we're going to go back.

We're kind of working in the middle here or towards the end, and we'll work back.

But I read that

Larry saw you doing the Jerry Stiller roast when you got up and were part of their, and saw you and went, oh, that's who I want to play.

That's exactly true.

Well, I had known him.

I met him maybe

1985.

at Catcher Rising Star when we were both doing stand-up.

And, you know, he was legendarily,

I don't want to say he was a bad stand-up his material was brilliant but he didn't he was not one that knew how to relate to an audience particularly well you know and we used to all come in the room and watch him because he was explosive he would just if so if one if he was killing but one woman looked at her watch he would start screaming and yelling and storm off the stage you know and he would do things like what i was there one night when he this is a legendary story when he looked at the audience he got

on stage looked at the audience and said

i don't think so and just walked out, you know.

Or when I used to MC a lot of catch, there's always that moment where you introduce somebody and then you cross paths.

You know, I would say, ladies and gentlemen, Larry David, and then I would walk off and he would walk on and he would always whisper in my ear, stay close.

Because he knew that he was just going to storm off.

You know, he had like a 20-minute spot or a 15-minute spot.

So if you were the MC, you had to stay in the room because that was usually when you went to the bathroom or went out and got a soda or whatever.

With him, you had to stay in the room because you never knew when he was just going to storm off the stage.

So

it wasn't a bit.

Let me just ask this.

This was real.

It was not him doing a bit.

I'm the storm off guy.

It's real.

Go on.

No, no, it was real.

He would get, he would get, one night, I remember it was like, I don't know, two o'clock in the morning, and he was doing some bit.

And there was something about a bungalow.

And a woman in the audience asked, what's a bungalow?

And he went crazy on her that she didn't know what a bungalow was.

And he stormed off.

It was always, we always watched him because it was such

for comedians, it was so much fun to watch him.

And there are certain comedians that die hilariously.

You know, it's always painful to watch a comedian not do well, but Larry did it hilariously.

And it was just a joy to watch.

So I had known him from way back then.

And then he moved to LA and I stayed in New York and I hadn't seen him.

And

I was struggling.

I was, this, this was like 1999.

And I was, I was, had gotten to be a really good comic and i just nothing was happening in my career i mean a little bit of this a little bit of that you know that kind of a thing and uh i was making a living doing stand-up and i was just very very frustrated and they at the friars club asked me to do the the roast

um because i had kind of made my bones with them because you had to in those days it was all these old starkers your alan kings and all these guys that didn't think women were funny especially if you were halfway decent looking, they couldn't imagine.

They were very confused because they didn't know if they wanted to laugh at you or fuck you.

You know what I mean?

It was that generation, you know.

Am I laughing?

So they asked me to do this.

They asked me to do this roast, and Comedy Central didn't want me to do the roast because I was not what their demographic was.

I don't know why.

Too female, too old, too Jewish, whatever it was.

And the Friars Club fought for me to do that roast because I had made my bones with them.

And

I remember I had laryngitis.

I was so nervous doing that roast that I lost my voice and I was on steroids and I was sitting next to Danny Aiello at the dais and he wouldn't shut up and I didn't want to talk and he kept on talking to me.

You know, Danny was like, oh God,

he was so funny.

And I did the roast and I was filthy because that's what you have to be.

You have to be really blue on a roast.

And that was a relatively blue comic anyway.

And Larry saw it and had this idea for

the first season.

It was an episode called The Wire, where

he wanted Jeff's wife to just, as the direction he gave me, was rip him a new asshole.

And so he saw me and he was like, oh, Susie, you know, it was like a light blobe.

She'd be perfect.

So he called me up and he gave me the part.

And I didn't know anything about it.

I remember he said to me, I said, well, what's the part?

Don't worry about it.

You could do it.

I said, well, send me a script.

There's no script.

And then he told me, but there's no money.

You're going to have to fly yourself out and put yourself up.

And I'm like, well,

you know, I don't mind working for day scale, but it's not going to cost me.

So find some money and fly me out, you know.

And they eventually flew me out coach and put me up in some fleabag place in Venice.

And I was just a day, I was getting day scale for the first, I don't know, three seasons.

I was, I had no contract, nothing.

And I never knew from season to season if I was going to be in it.

We never knew if he was going to come back.

After every season, he would say, That's it, I'm not coming back.

But I never knew that I was going to be in it, but he kept me in it.

Thankfully.

Hey, but I read that little thing,

that note about you,

Larry, casting you, wanting you because of that roast.

And so I went and watched it last night.

So for you to say that I, you know,

it's confusing for a woman who's funny and half decent looking.

You were hot, if it's okay to say that.

You were

astounding.

No, really astounding.

And

you were brilliant because it is confusing, probably for that group of men too.

That generation.

To see someone very beautiful, very sexy, rip them a new asshole and make fun of their manhood left and right.

It was truly brilliant.

It was a great, great performance.

One time, Alan King,

he was hosting something at

a hotel in Atlantic City, a show, and he had me on it, and he was the MC.

And this is how he introduced me.

He said, You know, in my day, all the women who were funny, they were funny.

There was something wrong with them.

Martha Ray had a big mouth.

Phyllis Dillard dressed in crazy outfits.

But this broad is pretty and funny.

Please welcome Susie Esmond.

That's how he introduced me.

This broad.

Broad.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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How old were you when you went, oh,

maybe this is something I want to do?

Because that wasn't in your family.

It was a very creative family.

It was a very...

Yes, you went to college with my cousin, as a matter of fact.

Remember, we discussed that?

Michael Pressman.

Oh, that's right.

Yes.

That's right.

So wait, a cousin, but related how to you and your family?

He's my second cousin.

His father was my grandfather's brother.

So he was really my mother's cousin.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

My mother's first cousin.

But the ages were, you know, he was closer and he's five years older than me.

So yeah.

Okay.

So there you are in this creative family, but you're not thinking, or are you?

about New York or, I mean, performing.

You know, from when I was a little girl, all I wanted to be was an actress.

And somehow

I had this idea and I was deeply insecure and no support whatsoever.

You know, nobody ever told me anything good.

I just had this idea that I had this talent.

And I remember in first grade when they were doing a play and they gave me some little part.

I didn't get Mrs.

Claus.

It was, I wanted to get Mrs.

Claus, Santa and Mrs.

Claus.

They gave it to my friend Lisa, who I'm still friends with.

And I remember thinking, what a bunch of idiots they are that they don't see that I'm like a great talent.

And they're just giving me these shit little parts.

You know, I thought that I was like, how do they not recognize my ability?

And then when I was about eight,

I was in camp and we did the Wizard of Oz as a play.

Because, you know, all Jewish kids go away to sleep away camp.

That's what we do.

And you always do a musical because it wasn't a sports camp.

And

I auditioned for Dorothy and I cried when I sang Over Over the Rainbow and they didn't give it to me.

They gave it to some pretty little blonde, you know.

And it was like, oh, fuck.

And they gave me, they cast me as the wicked witch of the West, surprisingly.

And it was no lines.

It was pantomime.

And I remember saying to the counselor, can I write my own lines?

And I wrote this whole melting death scene, you know, and I tried to change it from Margaret Hamilton and make it different.

And I did the whole scene.

And I was supposed to crawl underneath the stage, crawl underneath the curtain and, you know, in my death.

And instead, I got a standing ovation and I had to stand up out of my death scene and take a bow.

And then at the curtain call, I got more applause than Dorothy.

And then I said, all right, that's it.

I need to be a character actress.

I see that that's my ability.

I was eight.

Eight years old.

Wow.

Eight years old.

I was like, I got to be a character actress.

I don't, you know, being the witch is better than playing Dorothy.

And then, you know, then puberty happens.

And, you know, so many women relate to this.

I got so deeply insecure.

And there was theater stuff at my school.

I was too scared to ever audition.

And all I did was, you know, hang out at the football field and smoke pot and just lost.

And then I went to SUNY Purchase, which is known as a great theater school, but I was too scared to audition.

And I went there thinking, well, it's a theater school I could take class, but that was not the case because it was a conservatory.

So then I went through four years of college and I was a poli-sci major, urban studies major.

And when I was a sophomore, I told my parents I wanted to quit and move into the city and take acting classes.

At age, at age what?

At age what was this?

A sophomore in college.

So what was I?

19, 18, something.

And they were like, you can't do that.

You can't do that.

So I didn't.

And I graduated.

And the minute I graduated, I moved into the city and started taking acting classes and waitressing.

But then I got, I went, I was not, I was scared.

I was in a deep, deep depression and scared and didn't know what to do with my life and was in a very bad mental place.

Like a dark, like a real dark depression, bad boyfriend and, you know, all of that.

But when I was waitressing, the way that I would make it fun for myself is I would go back into the kitchen and imitate all the customers.

So the people that I was waitressing with kept on telling me to get on stage and do stand-up, but I was too scared.

So I took a class and again, they would give an assignment and I would cut because I was too scared to do the assignment.

And one day, one of this guy in class said, we would go out after class and he was like, you're really funny when you do these characters.

So how about if I just interview you in these different characters?

And we did that in class and it was, everybody laughed.

And it was like, wow, people are laughing.

And then I took an improv class and I was like, found that I was really good at it, which I was, you know, scared to death to do.

So again, they got, they for those people forced me to go to an open mic night which I did and I just did I never spoke in my own voice I just did these characters that I used to do people in my family you know the president of the menudo fan club I used to do this Hispanic girl and my grandmother and all her friends you know stuff like that

and there were these guys there who came over to me and they said, we're opening up a club and we think you're really funny.

We'd like you to come work for us.

And I was like, okay, I gave them my number, forgot all about it, never got on stage again because I was too scared.

And about three or four months later, they called me and they said, remember us?

Well, we're opening up the club next week.

We want you to come down.

And I did.

And that was a place called Comedy U on University and 13th Street.

And those guys just put me on stage.

They just loved me and put me on stage.

So for six months, I just worked there and developed.

And if not for them, I don't know that I ever would have been a stand-up.

Because the acting thing was not working for me.

You know what that's like.

You're, you, you got your headshots and you're going around to agents and nobody wants you.

You know, it's horrible.

Yeah.

Nobody wants you.

You're looking at backstage.

Remember backstage?

I do.

The, the, yeah.

And you'd look at it for auditions and show up to these open calls and nobody wanted me.

Yeah.

No, it's, it's a catch-22.

You need an agent to help you get work.

How do you get an agent?

You got to have work.

You know, yeah.

Let me get, let me ask you, did you write, what was the process for you in the early stand-up?

Did you write?

I always wrote everything.

Yeah.

The jokes, the pretty much a script.

In the beginning, I wrote everything.

And then after about six months, I realized I needed to speak in my own voice and I needed to break out and go to the Uptown Clubs, which would be, you know, Catch Rising Star, the Improv, the comic strip, because that's where you got seen in the industry.

So I didn't,

to me, in stand-up, the most difficult thing in stand-up is figuring out your voice, figuring out who you are as a comic.

And so I had to go through that process.

So I started MCing and started just talking and figuring out.

And then I got into a really bad habit where I would only write on stage.

I would have premises.

And, you know, some comics like Jerry Seinfeld, for example, he'll sit down every day and write jokes.

I was never able to do that.

Larry always had things written and, you know, fully formed.

I was never able to do that.

I had to write with the gun to my head.

So I would have a premise.

I'd be on stage.

And somehow I'd come up with a punchline in the moment on stage.

I had to have that, that adrenaline fear in order to get the punchline.

And I developed my act like that.

Did you, if you had to say

when I discovered my voice later on, what would you, how would you describe that voice?

And if you had to put it in a sentence?

I think what I started doing, it's funny because so many female comics do it now, but I started just talking about things that I was going through.

I was dating a lot of younger guys.

I was, you know, talking about sex, which most women were not talking about sex in a way that they actually enjoyed it.

Right.

It was, you know, you know, the old days, it was always like, oh, my husband, get him off of me, you know, that kind of crap.

And so I was this single girl out there dating and talking about that and talking a lot about my family.

And I just tried to be authentic.

I realized that, you know, Joy Behor is my best friend.

I love her, by the way.

Say hi.

Yes.

And we started out together.

She was already 40 when she started.

Like she didn't start doing stand-up really seriously till she was 40.

So she was in many ways a mentor to me.

And I remember the first time I saw her on stage and I had this revelation where I thought, oh, I get it.

I just have to be the way that I am sitting around the kitchen table talking to my girlfriends, which is what she was doing.

Right.

But and what I always did and was funny with my girlfriends.

So I tried to just make the audience into my friends and family and just be relaxed in front of them and just present myself as how I did in real life.

And eventually it, it.

it developed and it was consistent.

You have to be consistent too.

That's another thing.

Stand-up's hard.

Consistent in that character that people are responding to yeah yeah yeah and and you have to to me i always had to be truthful even though it's not literally the truth right you know it had to it had to be truthful and honest and um

and then i just i just developed into uh crowd work doing crowd work really well which you know was originally just meaning working the audience because I MC'd a lot, which is how I developed in a lot of ways.

So, yeah, it was a process that took a long, long time.

Yeah.

A long time.

I remember Ronnie Shakes, who is a great comic, who died very young.

I remember he said something to me when I first started saying, saying something like, it takes 10 years.

Or he said, it takes five years to figure out who you are on stage.

And I was, you know, arrogant.

I was like, well, it's not going to take me that long.

It took me 10, you know, at least, if not 12.

Who are some of the people you admire most in that same field?

Well, I mean, to me, the greatest stand-up ever was Pryor.

Yeah.

I just thought that he was just, because he was everything.

You know, he was, he was vulnerable and he ripped his heart open.

And, but yet he was really funny and he had great material and he did characters and he told stories and he was just

everything that,

yeah, made you think, made you laugh.

I mean, he was hilarious.

And a lot of comics will say that he's their idol.

And what was interesting, I had never been in a comedy club.

And I came out to LA to visit my cousin Michael.

And he had just directed prior in a movie, Some Kind of Hero was the name of the movie.

And he took me to the comedy store to see him.

And he was there workshopping material.

It was after that first brilliant concert movie that he made.

And I saw him and I was like, Some stuff was not working.

You know, he was workshopping.

Some stuff was hilarious and some stuff wasn't working.

And that was when I first realized, it was before I had ever gotten on stage, that I thought you had to have it like all down.

You know, I didn't know the process.

You know, I saw these guys growing up on Ed Sullivan and they had their bits, you know what I mean?

Right.

And they'd be out.

I thought that's, I didn't realize that you workshopped it and you worked it and you developed it.

So he was really my biggest influence in that way.

But coming up, I came up with Jon Stewart and Colin Quinn and Joy Behar and

oh, God, so I'm forgetting people.

Jerry was already well established by the time I came around.

And Larry.

Yeah.

And Larry.

Enough about Larry.

Forgive my ignorance.

Do you tour doing stand-up or do you do just individual nights here?

I don't do it anymore, Ted.

I don't do it anymore.

I have such.

I didn't tour that much because, you know, it was never, the women never really loved being on the road.

The guys all got laid when they were on the road.

right the women not so much you know we would have to like go back to this disgusting condo that they would put you up in and i never did the road a lot luckily i i got used to get a lot of work doing voiceovers and i did like every country club in the tri-state area and i limped along making a living without going on the road i'm slightly agoraphobic also i don't like leaving home me either Oh, really?

I don't know if we ever know what is the world saying what you should or shouldn't do with your career or what it is that it's originating from you.

But I love ensemble.

I love going to work in the same place, driving through the same studio gates.

Now that I have to love it because film didn't work out for me as much as television did, maybe.

But the truth is, I am the same way.

I love going home at night.

I love it.

And I'm not great in a hotel room.

You and I both, I know, because we've had this discussion, love to work.

I love to work.

I love the crew.

I like the camaraderie.

I love the whole feeling on set.

You know, even night shoots, which are so hard and you're all sitting around freezing with a cup of coffee.

And, you know, there's something, there's a romance to it that

I enjoy.

And I love the collaborative sense of it.

Yep.

Which is very different from stand-up.

Although stand-up, you are collaborating with the audience.

Right.

Right.

You know, I still marvel over like how good you are as an actor throwing the ball back and forth because not everyone does that.

Not everyone can be stand-up funny, which you are, and turn around and be collaborative actor funny.

But I also think, you know, the skill, one of the reasons why I was a successful stand-up, because I was never a great writer.

I was an okay writer.

I was a great performer, was because as a performer, I learned, and this goes back to my mother, relationship with my mother, but I learned to listen to the audience.

And I don't mean literally listen.

You know, young comedians come to me and ask my advice.

And I always tell them, you have to talk to the audience.

And again, I don't mean literally talking to the audience.

I mean, you actually, you're not up there, you know, just reading a cue card.

You're up there connecting to an audience in a way.

And I think that that's especially on curb because we're improvising.

Listening is the most important thing.

Right.

Right.

It's so true.

It is like,

and the people who don't do that well on curb or whatever

are those who have planned out how to be funny.

Or this is a great joke, so I'm going to make sure I work this in.

As opposed to show up, listen, and figure out how you can serve Larry in that moment.

Right, exactly.

Yeah.

Which is, to me, is way more fun.

Yeah.

Yeah, I agree.

Plus, it's what we're supposed to be doing no matter what job, acting job we're doing.

We're supposed to be listening.

You know, I think it's actually the key to every relationship in life.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, you have kids, listen to your kids, even, even your animals, you know, listen.

And in a marriage, it's really important.

I'm sorry, I wasn't listening.

What'd you say?

And it relieves you of a big pressure because otherwise you think that you have to invent and know everything.

You don't.

Listen, and you'll figure it out.

Listen.

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Let's listen in on a live, unscripted Challenger School class.

They're reviewing the American Revolution.

The British were initiating force and the Americans were retaliating.

Okay.

Where did they initiate force?

It started in their taxation without representation.

Why is that wrong?

The purpose of a government is to protect individual rights and by encroaching on individual rights they cannot protect them.

Welcome to eighth grade at Challenger School.

Learn more at challengerschool.com.

Let's go back to the beginning of Curb.

I'm assuming you would get recognized in New York from your stand-up here and there.

Yeah.

But you got shot out of a cannon by the second or third season of it was season three.

What was that like?

I mean, it's complimentary and it feels good and it's but it's also can be complicated.

What was that like to be shot out of that cannon?

Well, I just anecdotally, you know, we were very under the radar the first few seasons, first two.

And it was season three that I started to notice a difference that people were stopping me in the street.

You know, for me,

It's you people just ask me to tell them to go fuck themselves, you know, or people would, I'd be at the produce section in Fairway or Zay Bars, and somebody would shove a phone in my face and say, It's my husband, call him a fat fuck, you know, that kind of thing, which, you know, I'm not always in the mood.

I'm shocked, you know, whatever.

And it's a character I'm playing.

It's not what I actually do in real life.

So it was,

I think, you know, in New York, people are very sophisticated.

In LA too, they're very sophisticated.

They don't really bother you.

And generally,

people

are very

what I would find is generally people would just stop me and say I love you or you made me laugh and then you get those stories where they're like my father was dying and all he did was watch you and you know that kind of thing which is always still to this day touching to me and makes me feel like I actually maybe have a purpose in life you know

but it was it was nice it was nice to have that recognition and people telling you that you made them laugh.

I, you know what?

This is going to sound so treakly,

but I feel very lucky to be able to make people laugh.

I feel extremely blessed to be able to make people laugh.

It's like you're putting a good thing into the world.

It is.

I agree.

And everybody says we're not curing cancer.

I disagree.

I just agree.

Exactly.

We are.

Yeah.

Laughter is an amazing thing.

I'm

unlike you, I'm dependent on a funny writer.

Well, I have to disagree with you, Ted, because I've improvised with you, and you're pretty damn funny.

Okay, but a writer spent three months working on the setup for that funny, to be honest.

But yes, I actually, you know what?

If somebody says, I can be funny by listening, I can be funny in a moment off of something you did.

But I would not say, you know, that I'm funny all by myself.

I'm funny with myself.

I'm funny on curb.

And I know you write those lines.

And I know you respond.

And your character, you know, it's always made me laugh that not that Ted Danson is friends with Susie Esmond, but that Ted Danson on the show is such good friends with Susie Green.

I've always found that hilarious because it's so, her character is so not somebody that Ted Danson would be friends with.

Giving her.

Well, I was about to say something that I can't say.

Go, go, go.

Giving her.

No, no, no.

It was about the season.

I don't want to say anything.

I don't want to do anything away.

Very good.

Just a birthday gift you gave me this season.

Which is designed

to rub it in Larry's face.

Right, exactly.

Which I do.

Yeah, you do.

I love, also, something that I don't know how much part you had in it, probably, but your wardrobe, what, you know,

Susie wears on the show is like astoundingly,

wonderfully borderline bad.

Yeah, well, it's not just borderline.

It's bad.

Thank you.

It's a character thing.

You know how some actors work from the inside out?

I know Lawrence Olivia used to always do like putty on his nose and then become the character.

For me, with Susie Green, I put on those outfits and I just become her.

You know, it's like the wardrobe and then I just become her.

I kind of, I developed the idea of what I wanted her to look like.

I just wanted, you know, I don't want to play myself.

I'm with myself all day long.

I wanted to play a character and I wanted her to just think she had, there were these girls that I grew up with that used to be so secure in who they were.

And they were.

completely mediocre and yet they were completely secure.

They must have had mothers that really, really loved them because they were so secure in who they were.

And I used to marvel at them because I had a very difficult relationship with my mother and I was deeply insecure.

And I wanted to be that kind of a character that just, whatever she wore, she thought she was gorgeous and dressed, you know, she thinks Cheryl has the worst taste in the whole world and that she has the greatest taste.

And I just wanted to play this character that just thought that everything she did was just fabulous and had no insecurities whatsoever.

And if you don't know

how to

yeah, and that's what I kind of created.

And our first wardrobe designer, Wendy Range Rau, I remember telling her how I wanted her to dress.

And I said to her, she's like, well, where am I going to find clothes like that?

And I said, the back room of Lohman's.

And you wouldn't know this because you're a guy.

And she was like, what's that?

So I had to take her to the back room of Lohman's and show her how these women dress.

Where's Lohmann's?

Well, now it's out of business.

It's bankrupt now.

Was it New York?

It was in New York, but there was also one right next to the Beverly Center in L.A.

But

so then and then each then christina mangini came along and then uh leslie shilling uh our wardrobe designers and each one took it to the next level and it's really them that create you know they helped me create the look just finding the most bizarre i mean leslie has taken it beyond anything yeah this season

it's amazing how how much

I will do all this thinking about, oh, my character will be this and that.

Or, you know, I'll even go so far.

I'm so lame.

You know, it's like, what if something funny comes his way?

He'll probably react like, I'm reacting to imaginary bullshit in my head that, you know, that has nothing to do with anything.

So I have all these bad instincts.

You know, maybe I could have a scar or a limp.

Yeah, yeah, that would be it.

Yeah.

You know, and then you walk into wardrobe.

And if you've got a creative soul opposite you, all of a sudden they dress, put you in something, and you go, oh,

i got it you know for me on the good place

the wardrobe uh the costume designer handed me a bow tie and i put the bow tie on it was like oh yeah that completely changes everything everything yeah yeah pretty bold well that's what's so much fun about about film and television that a lot of people don't realize how collaborative they just see us because we're in front of the camera but you know and if you notice if you're on set you see the makeup artist is only looking at your makeup the wardrobe person is only looking at your wardrobe.

The lighting person is only looking at the lighting.

Everybody's doing their small little thing and they're so focused and so good at what they do.

Yeah.

Magic wand.

What are you doing five years from now?

Everything.

Do the whole picture.

Work-wise first.

Well, five years from now,

I would love to be on a series in New York that shoots in New York because as you know, I live in New York

that is

fun I my I want to work with people that I respect and love and do stuff that's funny that's my five years from now and I love doing uh

voiceover animation I love doing that kind of stuff you do a lot of fun too I do a lot of that yeah and I really really love that you know again one of the joys go back to curb one of the joys of curb is that we don't have to memorize lines yes and it's the same thing when you're doing animation You've got a script in front of you, which, you know,

you just have to show up, basically.

You just have to show up.

And I always have tremendous anxiety when I have to memorize lines.

I mean, I'm in bed the night before, like, you know, going over it, going over it.

I'm not very good at it.

Although it is a muscle you get better at, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know.

My fear now is like, don't let your

desire to, you know, and your focus be only on saying the lines correctly to the, you know, and leave behind the being with and listening and reacting, you know, spontaneously because you're worrying about that.

Yeah, it's much easier when you're improvised.

I mean, I would love to do another improvised show, but what I think people don't realize, a lot of people have tried to do improvised shows post-curb,

and they don't have Larry's story brain.

Yeah.

So they don't work because it's we're what we're not doing is just some free-for-all improv.

There's a very,

I mean, I'm telling you, you know this, but I'm telling the audience, there's a very detailed outline, and we know exactly what has to happen in the scene.

And it's all about pushing the story forward.

And the first take, a lot of times, is crap, you know, and then you go, okay, don't do that.

And everyone kind of realizes, oh, I bet that was the wrong hallway to go down.

So by about the fourth or fifth take, you haven't improvised the script, but everybody knows.

where they're going.

Yeah, we find the scene.

I think it takes us a number of takes to find every now and then you find it really early on, but I think it's usually four, five, six where we find the scene.

And then, you know, we, and it's an interesting way that we work because nobody says, okay, that's it.

Do that again.

We just know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, absolutely.

And I, you, you don't have the, oh dear, I better not go out and have a glass of wine with my friends tonight because I have to work the next day, which with scripted shows, I, you know, you do.

You do.

And, but you do have to show up on curb and other shows like that with an athletic energy you need to be

your headlights need to be on because it's it's fast it's exhausting yeah yeah it is

it's exhausting i mean i hate to say that because there's like really exhausting jobs yes but

you know um but five years from now i want to be working at something interesting and well-written, I guess, is creative

with creative souls.

Yeah.

With creative souls that I enjoy their company.

But I don't see retiring, do you?

No, no, I don't.

I can see not doing 10 months a year kind of work, but maybe seven or eight, you know.

Yeah.

Hey, here's the truth.

Here I am doing a podcast because I love going to work and it was the only work available.

So yes.

Right now.

Yes.

I want to be able to

see what funny.

I'm 75.

I'll be 76 when I start working on this next thing

that's lined up.

That I want to know what being funny,

a 76-year-old man, I want to know what that is in relationship to funny.

I want to do that the rest of my life.

And I want to do things I would, for my magic wand, I'd want to add, I want things that are reflective of the humanity.

of my moment in time.

I want to know what it's like, the frailties, the humor, the whatever of being 76.

Yeah.

And you know what else?

Because, you know, we both have grandkids.

I also want to do things that my grandkids can see.

Yes.

Yes.

Which is why I like doing cartoony stuff.

Yeah.

You know, they're a little young now to see, but I want them to be able to feel like, oh, my God, that's grandma's voice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great.

I will forever owe Mike Shore, who created The Good Place, is a wonderful writer, creator.

And because

12, 13, 14-year-olds love The Good Place.

It was a great show, Ted.

Yeah, no, it really was.

Really was.

And it delights me to have people come up thoroughly engaged with something that you were part of.

It's really, really fun.

Yeah, it is.

Can I back up one more second?

Yeah, do whatever you want.

Okay, Bronx, Bronx.

You know, when I was eight through,

let's go 15,

I was jumping on horses in the middle of Arizona and riding in this direction, that direction, whatever I wanted,

up at eight, be back by dinner time, or you're in trouble with my friends.

It was a very rural,

amazing life.

What were you doing?

What was your life like 8 to 15?

Well, at that point, we didn't live in the Bronx anymore.

We lived in Mount Vernon, which is right next to the Bronx, but more suburban, suburban uh but not suburban suburb but we we didn't have horses you know it wasn't suburban suburban um or rural in any way uh you know it's an interesting thing because i think that that you end up doing what you end up doing um

Like when I was a little girl, eight, nine, ten, and my friends wanted to play house.

I was like, I don't want to play house.

It's the most boring thing.

I don't want to be married.

I don't want to.

I got, my sister got for Hanukkah one year, a little reel-to-reel tape recorder.

So I was playing Johnny Carson.

I would walk around and interview people and play Johnny Carson.

I wanted to play talk show host.

And I was always

writing.

So that was early on.

Susie was showing up early on.

Wow.

That's early on.

And

I would write all these plays and things and get the neighborhood to put them on, you know, in the backyard or in the whatever.

And, you know, in our house, we had like a little cubby hole that I would do like little shows in.

And so, yeah, I was always doing that.

It's funny because, you know, Jimmy, my husband, who you know, he was building go-karts because he ended up building, being a builder, and he was building go-karts and, and this and that.

And that's what he was doing.

He ended up doing that.

And I was, you know, walking around with my tape recorder, interviewing people and playing different characters.

I love that.

That's what I was doing.

And then I used to go, my grandmother lived in the Bronx.

She lived right across the street from Yankee Stadium.

And in the summers, I used to spend the summers with her.

And we would go to this beach club

that it was like a dumpy place.

And it was called Shorehaven, but I thought it was called Shorehaven, like George Bernard Shorehaven, because that's what she used to say, we're going to Shorehaven.

So that's what I thought it was.

And I would go with her and she would be sitting with all the old ladies playing.

Canasta or cards.

And I would just sit and watch them like I was Jane Goodall or something watching, you know, this, the, the, the, this sociological thing.

And just like, I remember there was this one woman, Mitzi, who was clearly the ringleader, you know, and I would just watch, watch the, how they all interacted with each other.

And they would say, she's so good.

Look how she just sits.

She's so good.

But I was studying them.

I was just studying these old ladies who had all been immigrants and then all come to this country and just things like that.

I was just always observing people.

And then I would go home and I would imitate them all.

With my family.

I love that.

Was I read that your great-grandfather was a silent film actor?

Did I get that right?

Yes, he was in the Yiddish theater.

And his wife had something to do with opera.

Am I getting that right?

Well, no, my great-grandfather, his name was Leo Fyodorov.

He was the empresario of the Russian Grand Opera Company.

Oh, wow.

And

then they came to this, they left

Moscow in 1917, right at the revolution, and they toured all through the Far East, and they ended up coming here through Seattle or something.

And then they toured all through this country.

They ended up in

New York, and they were bankrupt.

And then he was in silent films.

He was with Lon Chaney in

or Chaney in Laugh, Clown, Laugh and Phantom of the Opera.

And he was in the Yiddish theater.

And yeah, but I never knew him.

No, but did just having that family history, did that,

because some people, I had no actors in my family going back at all.

Did it have an impact?

I think it did.

I think that it was, it was, it told me that it was a thing that you were possibly able to do for a living in life.

And then, you know, growing up in New York, my parents used to take me to Broadway all the time, which was a huge influence on me.

You know, being in the theater, it was.

As a kid, it was so exciting to sit in, it still is.

I still love going to Broadway, but to sit in the theater and the orchestra starts, you know, and then there's actors and there's singing and dancing.

And it was thrilling to me.

And having people in my family who were in the arts, I think

allowed me to know that it was a possibility to do, although I had no encouragement whatsoever from anybody.

They thought I was crazy.

So

not warm and fuzzy at home with people.

No, no, not warm and fuzzy.

No, not warm and fuzzy.

And

very much when I said that I wanted to be an actress, you know, like a lot of eye-rolling and, you know, just I had to waitress and support myself.

And nobody ever said I was good and you could do that.

Nobody ever said, follow your dreams.

You could do this.

Remember in a star is born with a grandmother, the original one with Jeanette

Gaynor.

And the grandmother says, you could do this.

And nobody ever did that.

Somehow, you know,

I think comedians, and some people might might disagree with this, but I think for comedians that there's got to be, it's so hard to get up there and do that there's got to be someplace in you, no matter how insecure you are, and we're all deeply insecure, there's got to be something in you that knows that you can do this and that you have the talent.

And a smidge of fuck you, watch this.

Exactly.

You know?

Not even a smidge, a lot.

Oh, I so hope with your magic wand, you so deserve to be New York, New York, New York.

Because that really is, you know, working in New York, there's nothing like it.

And you deserve to be.

Oh, you did it.

You did.

What did you do in New York?

You did damages.

Damages.

You got in New York?

Yeah.

And which, by the way, Ted, can I just say, oh, bored to death.

I loved you in bored to death.

I loved you in damages.

I mean.

Damages was a real dramatic role for you.

And that just showed your range.

But also funny to my eye.

It was, it was, I was so far off base, so ignorant of the fact that Glenn was going to eat my lunch that it was kind of funny.

Yeah, but it was, it was strong.

Yeah, it was.

I mean, you were acting.

Yeah,

acting.

Yeah.

I love that.

Shooting in New York is a little...

Bored to Death was a terrific series.

I love that.

I watched the whole thing.

Shooting in New York is a little more difficult than shooting in L.A., I think, but, you know, it's kind of worth it.

Well, I don't know if because you grew up in New York, but for us who didn't,

but went to study, I got to New York in 1972, having come from Carnegie Mellon University, which was all acting kind of thing.

And we all went to New York and tried to make our bones and we knocked on doors and auditioned.

And if you studied acting again, if you do that

and then come back someday to work.

in New York, it is so thrilling to me.

Working in New York was just like, wow.

Did you ever do theater here in New York?

I did.

My first job was at Theater 4, I think like on 54th Street off Broadway.

And it was a Tom Stoppard play, 2-1X called The Real Inspector Hound and Afton Agreet.

And it was 1972, 73.

And it was truly some of the funniest writing in New York at the moment.

And I understood.

Well, he was a great writer.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And I got to understudy, and it it was after the play had been going for about a year, which is about the same amount of time that it takes for most of the actors in the production to go, oh, I want a long weekend or I'm going to pretend to be sick or something.

So I went on every night.

After about three months, I was going on every night doing somebody's part.

It was a great job.

That was lucky.

That was lucky.

Then I have my one Broadway story.

It's kind of wonderfully classic.

It was a show out of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and it was called, I can't remember, and sorry, that's not the name of it.

I can't remember it.

But

I played a bartender, and we went out.

Yeah, I was like the third lead kind of thing.

And

we did really well.

It was really well produced and directed.

So all the jokes, all the rim shots were perfectly executed.

So you couldn't help but laugh.

And we came to New York, opening night, huge laughter, but it was the kind of laughter that they'd laugh because the rim shot, you know, was so good that they forced you to laugh.

But then you could hear the laugh going, wait a minute, what am I laughing at?

You know, and then they'd rally again.

And we went to Sardis, which was like a dream come true.

All your famous people on the wall.

And there were some famous people who had come and went to the party.

And this was back during Clive Barnes and Rex Rex Reed.

Rex Reed hated Clive Barnes, the critic for the New York Times, who for the New York Times.

Yeah, who could open and close, I mean, close a show like, boom, like that.

So I was upstairs at Sardis, and there's a bar, and it has a cage that comes down at the end of the night.

And Rex Reed was holding court, and the papers arrived for the reviews.

And

he decided to read Clive Barnes' review of our show, ridiculing and mocking Clive Barnes' choice of words, while Clive Barnes on paper was ripping us a new asshole and just hated the production.

So you found yourself having to laugh at Rex Reed while hearing that your show was getting closed.

That your show was going to, that was it.

So the next morning, I take my, my mother and father who had flown out from Arizona.

We were in Times Square, and I put them in a cab and off they went.

and I went to do the matinee and I walked in a little early.

I think I was the first one there and the stage door man said, Hey, whoa, where are you going?

I went,

I work here.

And he pointed to the sign and went, not anymore, you don't, pal.

And they closed it.

It was my one

closed it.

Yeah.

It was my Broadway showcase.

Well, at least you got to go to Sardis.

I did.

I did.

And it feels- Well, that's very all about Eve.

Yes.

Without the successful ending.

Yeah.

Right.

Now, I had trouble getting arrested in New York, theater-wise.

What year did you do Cheers?

I was 82, and I moved.

82.

Yeah, we moved

from New York to L.A., 78.

Right around the time I realized, oh, we're going to have children.

I wanted to go west closer to my family, closer to what made me feel comfortable.

You know, and Southern California had always been part of my life, as well as Arizona.

So going there and any audition that I, that involved film or television and that I didn't get in New York, but I just, it just made me realize I really want to be doing that.

So we went to California.

Yeah.

And it worked out very nicely for you, Teddy.

It did.

And here we are, you in New York,

me in L.A.

talking to each other.

I adore you.

I'm so glad that we got this.

I'll come to LA anytime to work with you.

Yeah, back at you.

Come visit.

Mary sends her love.

Come visit.

And I send mine back.

I adore her.

Hey, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ted Danson.

See you soon.

Bye, Susie.

Thank you.

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Hey everybody, it's Paul Scheer, host of How Did This Get Made, a podcast that covers the best, worst worst movies.

This week, we're diving into the brand new War of the Worlds reboot starring Ice Cube.

Yes, the movie that got 2% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ice Cube is saving the world from aliens via his computer.

It's so convoluted, this plot, but basically, if you have an Amazon account, you can save the day just like Ice Cube.

There is so much going on in this movie.

So join me, June, Diane, Rayfield, and Jason Manzukis, as we break down every bizarre choice and every Ice Cube one-liner on this week's episode of How Did This Get Made?

The podcast that makes sense of movies that don't.