The actress who gave Seinfeld its shrill mom

Estelle Harris 1928–2022

Estelle Harris was a virtuoso of maternal aggrievement. As Estelle Costanza, the mother of nebbishy layabout George Costanza on the seminal sitcom Seinfeld, Harris nagged, needled, and vented in a highpitched, nasal voice that erupted into a screech at the first hint of offense or confrontation. Typically, the spark was supplied by her husband, Frank, an explosive crank played by Jerry Stiller, whose indignant rage could be detonated by anything from a missing TV Guide to bananas in the Jell-O. The weapons-grade bickering between the pair (“George LIKES the bananas!” “So let him have the bananas on the side!”) was a highlight of the show, and brought Harris fame after decades of regional theater and bit TV roles. “I’m the universal mother,” she said of her popularity with fans. “Black people, Asians, WASPs, Italians, Jews—they all say, ‘Oh, you’re just like my mom.’”

She was born Estelle Nussbaum in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood, where her Polish Jewish immigrant parents owned a candy store, said The New York Times. When she was just 7, they moved to the coal-mining town of Tarentum, Pa., where they helped relatives run a general store and where she became the target of “anti-Semitic taunts.” She “found an outlet” in high school acting, discovering her comedic gift. In her late teens, she returned to New York to marry window-treatment salesman Sy Harris and became a homemaker raising three children. “Bored to tears” by that role, as she later put it, Harris returned to performing, said CNN.com. She began acting in community theaters, which gave way to summer stock and regional theaters, and later became the “queen of commercials.” Harris also had numerous small TV and movie parts before landing her breakout role in 1992, at age 64.

After Seinfeld’s nine-season run ended, “Harris continued to appear on stage and screen,” said the Associated Press. She was the voice of Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story movies and played recurring character Muriel in the Disney Channel sitcom The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. She sometimes expressed a desire to stray from the overthe-top characters she was known for, but she had no illusions about where her appeal lay. “People expect funny out of me,” she said in 1994. “I just do it naturally. I was born with the timing.”