Susie Essman reflects on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ ending: ‘I miss making babies with Larry’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
Susie Essman said goodbye to HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” this year after 12 seasons and 24 years. Besides her “crazy outfits” and “yelling and screaming” at co-star/showrunner Larry David, one of the things she misses the most is the show’s “improvised” and “creative” atmosphere. “I get to write all my own lines, I get to create a character in a way that I never could with a scripted kind of a series,” the actress tells us before adding with a chuckle, “I miss making babies with Larry.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
Essman plays Susie Greene, the foul-mouthed wife of Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin), who’s the manager of the fictionalized Larry David. Throughout her tenure on the program, Susie and Larry got into countless arguments that often devolved into screaming matches. And Essman wouldn’t have it any other way. “I would go back to my hotel room after one of those scenes, and just like sleep like a baby,” she recalls. “It was like primal scream therapy. I’d be so relaxed.”
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“Curb Your Enthusiasm” is a two-time Emmy winner for directing (Robert B. Weide in 2003) and picture editing (Steven A. Rasch in 2012), yet David has never claimed a prize of his own; he previously won a pair for writing and producing “Seinfeld” (1993). “I think it’s an injustice,” Essman declares about the lack of Emmy love. “I think that Larry’s acting is underrated. People think it’s just him — same thing with me. I think people think I’m just her, and I’m not acting. We’re all acting, and we’re all writing as we’re acting, which I think is highly unusual. We’re not just given a script to memorize and just spit out somebody else’s words. So yes, it’s an injustice, goddamn it!”
When asked how she would feel about “Curb” coming back in the future, Essman laughs, “We’ll be so old!” She explains, “Larry’s one of my best friends, and he’s one of my favorite people in the entire world, and I would do anything in the world for him. If he asked me to come back, I’m back. But I don’t think it’s gonna happen … The last season was so funny and so wonderful. It has not jumped the shark, and it just felt like the right time to end.”
Also in our exclusive video interview, Essman talks about why her character was “the moral compass of the show,” what happened to the caftan billboard after the show wrapped filming, and how the infamous wheelchair scene in the series finale was done during reshoots “a year after [they] had wrapped.”
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