JB Smoove on the move
Comedian dishes about differences between his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” character, Leon, and his stand-up
Like his character Leon on HBO’s Emmy-winning sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” JB Smoove is equal parts persuasive and persistent.
“If I had a wrench big enough to get those lug nuts off the Brooklyn Bridge and detach it from Manhattan, I could sell that damn thing,” Smoove said via phone last week, in advance of his March 23-25 shows at The Denver Improv.
That assertion’s rooted in truth. The 52-year-old actor and comic was last month profiled in Ad Week for his ability to connect with consumers, being an in-demand pitchman for Bic Men’s Razors, the Jerry Angelo collection, Audi, Crown Royal, Amazon, the Call of Duty video game series and Nike, among other national campaigns.
“It’s about being direct,” said Smoove, a veteran stand-up who formerly wrote for “Saturday Night Live.” “When you’re a real person and it comes across that way, it’s more believable. And I only like
taking on commercials for products that I actually use.”
That same directness has maintained a cherry role on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” where Smoove appears opposite neurotic “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David as the wily, unapologetic foil to David’s omnipresent anxieties.
HBO renewed the critically acclaimed “Curb” for a 10th season in December, and Smoove thinks his sales acumen had something to do with it.
Read on for more.
A: I always says there’s a lot of me on stage, but there’s no JB in my character Leon. I’ve been doing stand-up for almost 30 years and my act has to be seen live. I’m one of these comedians that changes like the wind. I have a tendency to improvise a lot so I don’t nail myself down to jokes. I’m a terrible robot. Even doing 3-minute sets on talk shows, I never stick to what I’m told to do. I don’t want to bore myself on stage.
A: I like to make myself laugh by saying something for the first time, which is why I have so much fun on “Curb.” The essence of the show is improvisation. I did one (stand-up) show one night where I went behind a curtain for 15 minutes pretending I was in a restaurant and someone ordered something crazy, so I went back there to prepare it. That’s what makes stand-up so amazing: that immediate reaction. You can’t get that from TV or movies.
A: (Larry David) and I had this connection from the audition. You’ve got a guy who’s very opinionated and has his own way of thinking and almost can’t help himself. And you have this other guy (Leon) who has to make a choice every time we’re in a scene together. Because it’s improvised, no one knows what anyone’s going to do or say, so that’s what fuels it. My character has to choose whether he’s going to be on Larry’s side, go against what Larry’s saying, or back up the person Larry’s going against, so I’ve got all these choices to make. And sometimes I make my choice right in the middle of a scene.
A: Leon has a way of getting clarity with what Larry’s talking about, but the clarity also comes with Leon’s ridiculous, roundabout way of understanding what Larry’s doing. I also make it a point every time we do a scene to tell Larry something new he didn’t know about Leon. In the first episode of the last season, we had this thing about constipation, and I did this whole improv bit around it: “I ran a marathon constipated! I did a hot dog-eating contest constipated! I shot a porno constipated!”
A: I know we start working in the spring, but I love not knowing anything else about it. The thing is, I do so many interviews and I can’t help myself sometimes to give people what they want. I tell Larry, “Look, it’s impossible for me not to tell people anything.” And when he was trying to decide whether he was coming back (to HBO), if he gave me even an inkling of a possibility, I’d go on a talk show and the next day I’d see something (online) about how Larry was thinking about it! Me and him dilly-dallying back and forth for months, and me saying, “I think he’s going to do it!” pushed it over the edge.
A: I always do it with everything, I don’t care what it is. I wonder if at some point I’m going to behind the camera somewhere. I watch things with this third eye. “How can this come across better?” I watch the energy of it. I always tell actors this: Even when I did “Curb,” I go into the audition room big. If not, it’s hard to go back, to turn it up. So why not go big and allow them to tell you to turn it down? Everybody knows how to turn it down, but nobody knows how high to turn it up.
Whenever I watch anything, whether it’s “SNL” or other TV or a film or anything, I’m always thinking, “I wish they’d made this choice.” There’s a certain rhythm stand-ups have, a certain amount of laughs-per-minute, and if people laugh at the premise you are in the ballpark. A premise lets people you know when you’re telling the joke, you’re going to love the punchline. The premise is the pace car. I’m on cruise control, and now they’ve adjusted their energy to me and I’m running the show.