In early 2017, Netflix announced that Jerry Seinfeld had signed a massive deal that would result in new stand-up specials and additional programming. The first of his two promised specials, Jerry Before Seinfeld, arrived last September. The second is still a long way out, but the “additional programming” drops today in the form of a new, 12-episode season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
Featuring repeat appearances by Alec Baldwin and Brian Regan as well as other Netflix comics like Dave Chappelle, Neal Brennan, and Ellen DeGeneres, the latest season of Seinfeld’s popular web series is everything fans have come to expect: comedians, cars, and coffee. It also documents Chappelle’s gifting his 2017 Emmy to his alma mater and Zach Galifianakis’s setup for Seinfeld’s recent Between Two Ferns episode.
There’s also Baldwin’s latest problematic foray into the ongoing #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, though that’s not the only thing the frequent Saturday Night Live guest said. Hence this roundup of the most enlightening quotes — be they actual nuggets of knowledge, just plain interesting, or inane enough to note — uttered by Seinfeld’s latest round of guests.
Dave Chappelle
“I always fantasized about being a Greenwich Village comedian. I’d read all those stories about 1966, and I realized that every career that I’ve ever admired went through New York City. My head was filled with fantasies about being like those guys.”
“Do you still hang out with a lot of comics? Me and [Chris] Rock had a discussion. Superheroes have to be around other superheroes. The Hall of Justice was more about them commiserating about their powers, and less about them actually fighting crime.”
“If I have an idea, it’s the driver. The idea says, ‘Get in the car,’ and I’m like, ‘Where am I going?’ The idea says, ‘I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. I’m driving.’ Then you just get there. Sometimes I’m shotgun, sometimes I’m in the fucking trunk. The idea takes you where it wants to go. Other times, me as my ego is like, ‘I should do something.’ There’s no idea in the car. It’s just me. That formula doesn’t work.”
“I’m a real socially awkward guy. Everybody thinks the guy on the stage is the fake, but really it’s the guy off the stage that’s fake. The guy on the stage, that’s the real guy. The guy off the stage, he’s the one that lies to people, doesn’t say what he actually thinks and all this other shit, just so that guy can exist uninterrupted.”
“For most people, not caring about the scrutiny of other people is one of the hardest things to do. I would even say it’s harder than public speaking itself.”
Kate McKinnon
“I have the most fun when I’m at something that is horrible, because I’m making fun of it and I’m enjoying it. If something’s supposed to be fun, I hate it.”
“Oh God, parallel parking on the right side of the road? God you’re a man, you’re a real man. This is incredible … You wanted to be on camera doing it. ‘I’m Jerry Seinfeld, goddammit, and I’m going to park on the right side of the road!’”
On comedians and clothes: “It’s such a cerebral thing. You’d rather be a brain in a jar talking than have to attend to the physical body. Plus you can’t look too good. If you look too good, you stop being funny.”
“My clothes say, ‘Do not talk to me.’ I wore a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants pajama bottoms, clogs, and a hand-me-down hooded sweatshirt. I gave myself my own haircuts, and that’s when I looked the best!”
Ellen DeGeneres
“When I lost my sitcom, I didn’t work for three years solid until I got the talk show.”
“I was bitter and sad and angry. How did this change everything, just by me being honest and saying I’m gay? Why is this such a shock to people? Why is it such a big deal? Then I went on tour and I would say 90 percent of the audience was gay. Some brave straight people went. All the gay people really thought I was doing some kind of gay pride tour, so I was making fun of the fact that I was their leader. It was like, ‘I am not your leader. I’m nobody’s leader.’”
“I love firemen … They’re great. They don’t carry guns. They run into danger.”
“The world is such a scary place right now in so many ways — and you have children. There’s North Korea, there’s fires, there’s storms. It just overwhelms me with dread.”
“I’ve never seen anyone drink so much coffee in my entire life. It’s too much. It doesn’t affect you?”
Hasan Minhaj
“Knowing that I’m wearing the same shoe Michael Jordan is wearing, or my favorite celebrity or whatever icon is wearing … It’s a connection point. I’ll never live in his house. I’ll never drive his car.”
“Those [Daily Show] producers that come in and bring in the six big stories — holy shit, that’s the best. That hour discussion is really fun. That’s the best time of the show: ‘Play the clip. All right, let’s talk about it.’ And then it’s just a bunch of us arguing it.”
“I actually love that everything’s called ‘the Mecca.’ You can be as Islamophobic as you want, but then you go, ‘You know, this is the Mecca.’”
“When you think about coming to America, it’s like getting that hat on Draft Day and shaking David Stern’s hand … I’m a comedian and my sister’s a successful attorney. It’s crazy, man. So when I look at my dad, I really look at him like a great sports jam. I’m like, ‘You really did it. You really planned out this franchise.’”
Dana Carvey
[After Seinfeld says Harvey Weinstein might be in the building.] “Are you going to try to top people on how disgusted you are? It’s a competition online: ‘I am appalled! I am disgusted!’”
“You’re a little fuzzy right now, until you get the coffee. Regis told me that.”
“We came up during a time where they didn’t know much about us. We never saw Sinatra get his hairpiece on. We just came out, and we’re heat-seeking missiles. We destroyed and then we left, and then there was this magic veneer. Now authenticity has come in. They want to know who we are. This is the new comedy, authenticity.”
“I’ve realized more how much people need to laugh, because life beats you up. And you have people after the show going, ‘I really needed that.’ If I see – and normally it’s a woman, if I’m working out at a club – if I see someone going like that [wipes his eyes] from laughter, I go, ‘Well what’s better medicine than that? Nothing!’”
Neal Brennan
“When my friends have kids, it’s over. It’s not the marriage. The wedding’s not the end. I did Seth Meyers’s show and I made a tribute video to our relationship because he had a kid. I did an RIP, an ‘In Memoriam’ for our relationship, because I know it’s over.”
“If I ever got caught in some think-piece snafu, or like, ‘Neal Brennan is problematic’ … ‘Neal Brennan’s take on blank is problematic,’ I would say, ‘Hey, let’s wait a month. If you still care, then we’ll talk about it.’ But I know they’re not going to. They’re just going to get to, ‘What’s the next scalp?’”
Seinfeld: “Nobody fails and experiences public failure more than a stand-up comedian.”
Brennan: “You ever think about, like, ‘Well, I wonder if I can take waterboarding?’ I feel like, ‘Yeah, I’d give it a shot. I’ve been auto-waterboarding on a nightly basis.’”
“The only thing I really value in the world? Ideas. New ideas are the only thing I care about.”
Tracy Morgan
“There’s a lot of people out there that aren’t funny, Jerry, but it’s Instagram now.”
“I love talking. Communication. You’ve got to get it out. Whatever it is, you’ve got to get it out.”
“We know it’s the most difficult thing in the world to make people laugh, especially when you’ve got nothing to laugh about.”
“Know why I’m talking a lot? I was in a coma for ten days.”
“My family told me I was going to be shit if I didn’t get my GED. Now look at me!”
Brian Regan
“My dad was always very funny. Very dry sense of humor. Very silly but dry. Silly, nonsensical things with a straight face. I don’t know how he did this, but every time he came home, he was in a good mood. I know that can’t always be the case … I wish I had more of that with my kids, because I can wear my emotions on my sleeves.”
“Nobody can take away the laughs. If it was just acting, it’s subjective and somebody can say, ‘Well they’re not that good, they don’t have this, they don’t have that.’ But if you get onstage and make people laugh, nobody can say they’re not laughing … I’m trying to make the audience laugh. I’m not trying to please some guy at a typewriter.”
“You know how a doctor has to hit you with the news? That would be harder to me as the doctor than learning all the medical stuff. To go tell some family bad news — I don’t think I can do that.”
“You know the butterflies, when you get the butterflies? I always say that the things you remember in life are the things that happen right after you had butterflies. So you should never avoid the butterflies, because those are the memory-makers.”
Alec Baldwin
[On people disagreeing with him.] “When I’m gone, they’re going to miss me.”
“Isn’t it a new world between men and women now? We’ve got to really, really be vigilant. Ever vigilant. I put my arm around my wife the other day, and then literally, my arm went, like it was an electric charge. I put my arm around my wife’s waist and went, ‘Oh, I’m sorry! Was that inappropriate?’”
“When you talk about the plague of male sexuality and the culture now … God, when I was in seventh and eighth grade, every girl, it was always the same. With every girl, I was like, ‘Hello!’” [mocks nervousness] “I was paralyzed with fear. I look back now as I’m older, especially with kids, and I go, ‘I’m lucky I had this when I was a kid. I’m lucky I grew up this way.’”
[On irritating Sarah, Duchess of York (a.k.a Fergie) at a dinner party.] “Hey, this omelette? This is for you, Fergie. This omelette’s on you. We’ll send the bill, care of Buckingham Palace.”
Zach Galifianakis
[On colleges censoring speech] “There’s nothing liberal about shutting someone up.”
“Talking to my dad while he’s eating is like talking to a blender with the top off.”
“That’s the challenge, I think, for a comic that gets a little bit of success, or a lot of success. I felt quite intimidated after The Hangover. Not to be complain-y, but I was like … I panicked. Because I thought, I got to sit and watch people and observe it. That’s where I got everything. I got threatened by [the idea that] I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore.”
[On people always thinking he’s doing a bit.] “It’s become an issue. I can’t say anything. I have to say I’m being serious. I cried at my sister’s wedding giving a speech, because I was emotional about it. There were 500 people there. They started laughing at my crying because they thought I was doing a bit.”
John Mulaney
Mulaney: “My wife has a much better visual sense. She knows how things will look together. That’s where I fall apart.”
Seinfeld: “She thinks she knows.”
Mulaney: “She does know.”
“Lost in all this [is Trump is] the first blonde president, and absolutely no one’s giving him any credit.”
“I was a city kid. I liked it. I just walked around Chicago. From about the age of 9, I just walked out the door. I remember one time when I was 11, I went to see a movie and then I went to a diner and a read a magazine at the counter and had lunch. Then I walked home like a divorced man. I lived my life.”
Jerry Lewis
Seinfeld: “If you don’t get Jerry Lewis, you don’t understand comedy.”
“I think the reason it’s tiring is we’re never satisfied. Comedy, it’s caution thrown to the wind. I’ve been dissatisfied with some of the funniest shit I ever put on film.”
“Remember what we’re doing, Jerry. I never, ever, ever allow it to go out of my mind. This kind of freedom of laughter, and not needing to find out why. Just go and laugh.”