Susie Essman, Larry David clash again in ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Season 11, here’s how they get on in real life
They’re not about to curb their squabbling.
The reluctant pals played by Larry David and Susie Essman on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are always at each other’s throats, and fans of the comedy series won’t have to wait too long to see them in action in the upcoming season.
Season 11, debuting Sunday on HBO and HBO Max, features their characters bickering again. But once the cameras turn off, so does the feuding.
“I’ve known Larry since 1985, 1986. I don’t think we’ve ever had a fight,” the Bronx-born Essman tells the Daily News. “We happen to be extremely good friends. We’re very close.”
David, creator and co-producer of “Curb,” stars as a version of himself on the Los Angeles-set show, while Essman plays foul-mouthed Susie Greene, wife of Larry’s agent Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin).
“One of the reasons why we can speak to each other in this despicable way,” Essman says, “is because we know that we’re playing. They’ll say ‘action’ and we’ll be screaming and yelling and cursing. Then they’ll say ‘cut’ and we’ll be like, ‘OK, where do you wanna go for lunch?’
“It’s so much fun to have that freedom to have somebody who’s your really good friend and then just scream and yell and curse at them and there’s no meaning behind it,” she adds.
Essman, 66, also says that the actors have an added appreciation of each other thanks to their lines being improvised around a rough outline David writes.
“Because it’s improvised, you really have to have a lot of trust and that has to be built in,” she says. “So we have a tremendous trust and respect for one another and that helps us to scream, yell and fight and act like silly creatures.”
In one upcoming conflict, a host of people are gathered around a large dinner table as Susie makes “a toast to friendship.”
Larry’s not impressed and is caught making faces, so Susie gets annoyed he won’t look her in the eye and toast. Larry and Jeff then mock her until she calls her husband’s friend “rude.”
“There’s a lot more to that scene later on than just the toasting,” Essman explains. “The outline would say something like, ‘Susie gives a toast. Larry doesn’t look her in the eye and she gets mad at him.’ That’s all. The rest of it, we just go. How I get mad at him, what I say when I’m mad at him, none of that is written down. That’s just the freedom that I get in this part, which is why I love it so much.”
Essman adds that the stars usually film a lot of different takes to give the editors options for whatever they may want to play up.
“So sometimes we just go on really long and then they just cut it for what they need,” she says. “One of the reasons we do so many takes is because Larry starts giggling all the time.”
This season’s guest stars include Jon Hamm, Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Lucy Liu and Tracey Ullman.
“I did a whole bunch of stuff with Tracey Ullman. I absolutely loved working with her,” Essman said. “She’s in a few different episodes. That was just a dream. I’ve never met her before. She’s so committed and she has no vanity whatsoever.”
Essman and David met on the New York comedy club scene in the ‘80s and despite the show’s sunny California backdrop, Essman still lives in New York.
“I’m an Upper West Sider,” she says proudly.
Essman says that when she was a child, her grandmother lived across the street from where Yankee Stadium now stands, which was then a park near the previous stadium.
“So, whenever I go to Yankee Stadium, which I do a lot, I go right near Gate 4 and I wave to her apartment,” Essman says. “I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid and I remember sitting on the fire escape looking into the stadium. Nobody ever took me because they said I was a girl.”
Essman got her start in stand-up comedy, a job that’s been the focus of a lot of attention recently after comic Dave Chappelle took heat for his recent Netflix special, “The Closer,” for what some have called transphobic jokes.
“It’s such a balancing act,” Essman says. “Political correctness could be so deadly to comedy because that’s the nature of what we do, is to offend. At the same time, you don’t want to be insensitive or hurtful to anyone. So it’s really such a balancing act.
“This season [of ‘Curb’] has a lot of politically incorrect stuff in it that Larry always seems to get away with because it’s almost like the political incorrectness is the point,” she adds.
While there’s been as much as a six-year break between seasons of the show that began in 2000, it’s only been about a year and half since Season 10 ended.
“We’ve been doing this for 21 years,” Essman said. “And I’ve learned never to be surprised at Larry’s decisions. Sometimes, he takes six years off. Sometimes, he takes a year off. It’s whatever he’s feeling.”
