The final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm — for real this time, according to all parties involved — started airing last month, 24 years after its first season. As Susie Essman tells it when we meet on the Upper West Side (unlike the rest of the cast, she never moved to L.A.), when Larry David asked her to film some scenes for his new show back in 2000, there was barely any budget, and the entire cast shared one trailer. She definitely didn’t expect to play Susie Greene for more than two decades.
In a show with many great comedic performances, Essman’s might be the very best — or, at least, she’s the person who most reliably destroys me. As Susie Greene, the garishly dressed, short-tempered wife of Larry’s agent, Jeff (played by Jeff Garlin), Essman provokes the kind of joyfully involuntary response that feels more like a sneeze than laughter. She and David “can speak to each other in this despicable way because we know we’re just kidding,†she says. The groundwork for their friendship was laid in New York’s ’80s comedy scene, where the two came up together when she was running from comedy club to comedy club seven nights a week. After 35 years behind a mic, Essman isn’t planning to do stand-up again, but she does have a couple things in the works — though she’s not sure if any role can replace Susie. “Working on Curb, I’m such a part of the creative process,†she says. “To get the opportunity to have to create a character like that and to meld with the character like that, you never know when that’s going to happen to this business.â€
I’d love to talk about the episode that just aired, and the final season as a whole — what that has been like.
Well, we’re all in a state of mourning. It was two weeks ago that we got the phone call about Richard. He had not been well for a number of years, as you could see, but he was not dying by any means, so it was kind of shocking. The hardest thing I find about getting older is losing friends.
Do you have any particular memories of Richard Lewis you’d like to share?Â
We were very good friends. The thing that we used to say all the time is that we never had a scene together in all these seasons. We would have scenes where we’d be at dinner parties at the same table, but we never had an interaction. And it pissed us off, because we loved each other. We wanted it so badly, and we never had it.
I sort of can’t imagine how that scene would go down. Because that character is untouchable in a way.
He wanted me to just yell and scream at him, but everybody wants that. And Larry saves me for himself.
Oh, I have so many memories of Richard. For a while, we went on the road together doing stand-up, which was insane. Insane. He wouldn’t even go into the room — I always went on first — until I said, “Good night, ladies and gentlemen,†and walked out. He would wait in the car outside. He was so idiosyncratic. Before and after the show, there would be so many messages from him, so many emails. It was the most neurotic behavior.
What would his messages say?
Just on and on and on. Once we were doing a gig in Boston, and after the gig, I went out to dinner with my husband down at the bar, and when I went up to the room, there was a 45-minute message on the hotel machine. I’m not exaggerating. Just on and on on these tangents. But he was incredibly sweet and lovable. These people like Richard and Bob Einstein and Gilbert Gottfried, they were such unique voices. They can’t be replaced, and the loss for me personally and the world is huge.
Jeff Garlin said on your podcast recently that Richard would sneak index cards into scenes with pre-written jokes on them, and Larry would throw them out just before the camera started rolling, which cracked me up.
He would always bring lines. Richard was a terrific writer. He could come up with jokes like [snaps]. I don’t really have that ability; I’m not facile with joke-jokes, setup, punch line. My stand-up was never like that. He had the ability to come up with Richardisms right on the spot, but he would also preplan, which is the worst thing to do. For years, Larry would never let any of the guest stars see the outlines, especially Richard. From day one, he let me see them, but I was the only one. And he would not let them see the outlines for that very reason: He didn’t want you to preplan what then became bad sitcom lines. He was adamant about Richard not seeing the outlines, and Richard would call me ahead of time and beg me to see them. I’d be like, “No. No, you can’t.†And yet he was a brilliant improviser too, so he didn’t really need them.
I’ve loved his scenes in the recent episodes. It’s been a fun season so far. Catch As Caftan, Susie’s new line of caftans — how did that happen?
Well, Emma, right now, as we speak, in Santa Monica there is a great big billboard. I guess it went up on Monday or something? My friends have been sending me pictures — I’ll show you. I’m not making a dime on these caftans; HBO is selling them.
Susie always has some scheme like that. She had the bedazzled sweatshirts, and then … soaps?
Yes, I had Soap’s On. Lotions and potions.
Do you have a backstory for Susie? What was she doing when she met Jeff?
You know, I have over the years. I kind of fantasize things. The interesting thing is that Larry and I have never spoken about the character; I just made it up. I knew that he wanted her to have a filthy mouth and be somewhat rageful, but the only direction he gave me, in the first scene in that season-one episode called “The Wire,†was “I want you to rip Jeff a new asshole.†And I was like, “Well, I’ve been in relationships. I can do that.â€
I never want to play myself. I’m with myself all day long — it’s enough. And I wanted to play this character who has complete confidence in everything she does and has zero self-awareness. I kind of made up a backstory for her: She was a very loved child, and she was coddled and constantly told she was brilliant and beautiful — all the things I was never told. When you do these things, it’s an opportunity to have a fantasy of what that would have been like. I had a very difficult mother. What would it have been like to have a mother who just loved you? I have no idea.
Susie’s confidence is great. But she kind of takes it too far in that direction — the clothes she wears …
Right. Like in that episode a couple weeks ago when Jeff and Susie are in therapy and I say something like, “I’m all about loving and warmth!†She has no self-awareness whatsoever.
And she would be a very different character if she dressed like Cheryl.
She thinks Cheryl has the worst taste in the world.
I always had a fantasy that Moe Greene was Jeff’s great-uncle. Another fictional character, from The Godfather — Michael has him shot in the glasses. And before she met Jeff, she was in fashion. Lived in New York. I knew those women who worked in their 30s as a buyer or something. That’s what she did. And then she became a Brentwood housewife. The other question is: Why do they stay together?
Do you have a theory about that?
I think being married to Jeff gives her a certain cachet in show business. She gets to go to premieres and gets tickets to things. They brought up their child, Sammy, and he makes a lot of money.
I do think she really loves him, oddly enough. I think he’s hers and she knows he cheats on her, but I don’t think she cares that much as long as he buys her a new house or a new ring or whatever. So she’s old-fashioned in that way — the opposite of me. I’ve been with my husband for 20 years, but I met him when I was 48 years old. I’ve always been single and self-supporting and never had a man take care of me or any of that stuff. But I think that Susie loves him, and she accepts him, and this is their life. She’s not going to blow her life. It’s like my mother used to say — my parents had a horrible marriage. She’d say, “Where am I gonna go?†And it was kind of true. Her whole life was about being the wife and the mother.
But the real answer to that question — and I get asked that question a lot — is that it works for the show, and Larry needs us together. It works for the story lines, and that’s it. In comedy, it’s a different kind of acting. Everything doesn’t have to make sense. Like, I have these huge fights with Larry and I kick him out of the house, and then the next day, I’m like, “Hey, Lar, why don’t we do a dinner party?†It just works for the show.
Can you recall a time when you really cracked up in the middle of a scene?
Larry breaks all the time. He’s the worst out of anybody. He breaks with me because he loves being yelled at. Making him laugh is a great joy, although after six or seven takes, I’m like, “All right, stop.â€
Generally, I don’t break character, but there was once when I really broke. It was season eight, and the episode was “Officer Krupke.†Larry’s wearing women’s panties, and in my living room he drops his pants and he’s got these little red panties on. I remember Jeff and I just lost it to the point where they had to redo my makeup. I mean, I couldn’t stop laughing.
Some of the scenes seem like they might be going on for much longer than we see, because they’re so conversational. Are there any prewritten lines in the outlines?
Sometimes there are prewritten lines because it’s necessary for the story. Some scenes we’ve done are too complicated to improvise, but not many at all.
I was thinking about this, because Deanne Bray was at the premiere the other day — she was in the “Rat Dog†episode. I read the outline, and it was like, “Susie is interpreting the sign language.†I was like, What? Susie knows sign language? There’s a scene where Deanne’s character confronts Larry, and she has to yell at Larry, and I’m supposed to be translating. So at first they were going to give her the lines to say so that I could memorize them and then translate them, but I was like, That is so unfair to this actress. Improvising is the whole point of being on Curb. I believe I came up with the idea to have an IFB in my ear so the translator on set was telling me what Deanne was signing, and I’m saying it back to Larry. You figure out ways to work it.
After you started working on Curb, did you ever consider moving to L.A.?
Never. I am the only person on our cast who never moved to L.A. I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
And Curb has one season set partially in New York.
That was season eight. What I found about those episodes is that New York becomes a character, as it does in Broad City also. You know, if you’re in my house in Brentwood — my television house, not my real house; I don’t have one — you look out the window and there’s a bush. For the television house on Central Park West, I look out the window and there’s Central Park. I just loved it, because finally I’m home.
I just rewatched the scene in the car with Larry where Susie has an involuntary orgasm because the passenger seat is broken and vibrating …
That’s one of my favorite episodes. The funniest part about it was that in between shots, Larry was doing the orgasm that he wanted me to do. It was hilarious. It was just the two of us in that car, and we were on a tow thing, with the director — Larry Charles directed that, I think — and we’re driving through Harlem, and I just remember turning to Larry and saying, “In a million years, I never thought I’d be driving through Harlem having an orgasm.†Every year I would get the outlines, and I’d be like, Oh, I guess I’m having vaginal rejuvenation. I guess I have a caftan business.
Tell me a little about how the clothes come together. Are you involved in the shopping at all?
Every now and then I’ll see something in an offseason that’s so Susie Greene, and I just purchase it, but rarely. Leslie Schilling is our wardrobe designer, and I created the look, the outrageousness of it, but then each of our successive designers — and there have been three over 12 seasons — have come up with more. Christina Mongini did many seasons, and then Leslie Schilling came on after COVID, and they just brought it to another level. My fittings are hilarious. We just laugh, laugh, laugh.
The Guns N’ Roses shirt was really good the other week. She has kind of a rock-and-roll style at times.
This coming Sunday, she’s wearing a sweater that says “Rock and Roll†on it.
When I first came up with the look, Wendy Range Rao, who was the costume designer then, said, “Where are we going to find clothes like this?†And I said, “The back room of Loehmann’s.†It was a discount store started in the ’40s in Brooklyn, and it was all designer stuff, discounted. But the back room was designer — Versace, stuff like that. Because it was the stuff that didn’t sell, it would usually be outrageous. Everything was still expensive, but you were wearing a Versace. The back room of Loehmann’s — anyone of a certain age who’s a New Yorker will remember.
I’m curious if you have any thoughts about what Susie will be doing in ten years.
Well, let’s think. Her caftan business is huge, and she goes on QVC and she’s selling her own line of stuff. That’s about as far as I’ve taken it. We finished shooting a year ago, at the end of March 2023. We came back for reshoots a few weeks ago, but in my head, I’ve said good-bye to her.
How do you do that after so many years?
I felt ready. I’ve been asked this question a bunch: How do you know it’s really over? Larry would say it was over after every season, but now, it’s just a feeling. I can’t describe it any more than that. Richard having died makes it feel even more so, but even before Richard died, when we ended last year, it just felt done to me.
There were other times when Larry said it was done, and it was like, No, it’s not done. When he finished after season eight, I remember I was sitting in a parking lot upstate at a grocery store and he called me and said, “That’s it. It’s done.†And I went into a deep depression that I was never going to be Susie Greene anymore, that I was never going to put on those outfits again. Of course, six years later, he came back. This time, I feel sad about it, because I love the people I work with more than anything, I love working with Larry more than anything, and the crew — we’ve had a lot of these same crew guys and women for 20 years. But it just feels done. The last day on set was intense.
What was that like?
Well, no one was talking about it, but we all knew it was the last day. And Larry’s quiet — I always know when Larry’s quiet, he’s emotional. And we finished, and Richard said something, and Cheryl said something. And I was going to, but I knew I would break up, and I didn’t want to do that.
It was very emotional, because we’ve all been together for a long time. We’ve watched marriages and divorces and kids being born and grandkids, and it’s been a full life.
It’s great to hear that Richard Lewis said something.Â
Well, Lewis is very sentimental — was. I hate to talk about him that way. He was someone who would always tell you how much he loved you, how wonderful he thought you were, what great work you would do. He would call me after we’d shoot and tell me how great he thought I was. He was a very sentimental guy.