Jerry Seinfeld talks coronavirus, Netflix special
How would our favorite fictional characters weather a global pandemic? It’s a hypothetical that TV heavyweights Tina Fey (30 Rock), Norman Lear (All in the Family) and David Mandel (Veep) ingeniously answered in a Vulture.com interview last month, and NBC’s Parks and Recreation heartwarmingly brought to life last week, in a special benefit episode that reunited Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and other beloved characters.
Jerry Seinfeld had the same question asked of him during a conference call with journalists Monday to promote his Netflix comedy special 23 Hours to Kill, streaming Tuesday. The Seinfeld star was asked which of the sardonic foursome – Jerry, Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George (Jason Alexander) or Kramer (Michael Richards) – he’d be most curious to see handle a quarantine.
“I think George would be the most interesting, trying to deal with the social distancing,” Seinfeld says. “I feel like the others would really like it and really enjoy the lack of social difficulties that they always have.”
Sadly, fans won’t see what that might look like anytime soon: Seinfeld says he hasn’t spoken to his Seinfeld co-stars or co-creator Larry David about reuniting for a coronavirus-themed episode in the vein of Parks and Recreation.
“I didn’t see that and I haven’t had any conversations about it (with them),” Seinfeld says. But “that sounds like a lot of work.”
Seinfeld’s first original stand-up special in 22 years, 23 Hours to Kill, was taped at New York’s Beacon Theatre this past year. (Jerry Before Seinfeld streamed on Netflix in 2017, and featured early material that jump-started his career.)
Throughout the hour-long set, Seinfeld runs through mostly family-friendly jokes about texting, Pop-Tarts and marriage, and even jumps out of a helicopter into the Hudson River, in an elaborate opening segment nodding to the special’s spy-movie title.
With many coronavirus experts predicting that live events such as concerts, theater and sports won’t return until next year, Seinfeld, 66, is unsure when he’ll get back in front of an audience. But he wants to wait until restrictions on large gatherings are lifted completely, whenever that may be.
“If you’re going into a theater and it’s only one-quarter full and everybody’s got 10 seats between them, I don’t know if that’s worth doing for me,” Seinfeld says. “I’m going to wait until everyone does feel comfortable gathering so that you can relax and have a good time. I’m happy to wait. I don’t want to compromise the experience .... When you go see a comedian that you love and you laugh, it’s a great release. And I think people are going to want and need it very much when the time comes. But I want to wait ‘til we can really do it.”
But when that time does come, Seinfeld has little interest in writing and performing new material that addresses our current moment. Although he does have one coronavirus-related joke in mind.
“I was asking a comedian friend of mine the other day, [Saturday Night Live alum] Colin Quinn, and he said people are going to be sick of it by the time we get into those venues and [they’re] not going to want to hear about it,” Seinfeld says.
“I mean, a great joke is a great joke if you have a great joke about the virus. What I’ve been saying about it is, if I was another virus, I would be intensely jealous of this virus coming up with this ‘two weeks of no symptoms’ idea. It’s like the most brilliant bit that a virus ever thought of: that we can spread without them knowing that we’re in there. So, you know, the virus has got some very clever stuff.” (USA Today/TNS)