Comic Essman makes David lose it on ‘Curb’
Her character Greene steals scenes with voice as loud as outfits
Comedian Susie Essman spots them regularly, out in the urban wild: fashion doppelgängers.
We had barely begun our lunch in New York City when she leaned in and gestured conspiratorially. “That’s a total Susie Greene outfit,” she said, spying a woman entering the restaurant in a hooded, salmon-orange jumpsuit crosshatched with mint green slashes. “And she’s got a leopard-print purse, look at that!” She sat back, delighted.
Power clashing is the life force of Susie Greene, the singular character that Essman has inhabited on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” since the HBO series, created by Larry David, began in 2000. There is no one in the entertainment universe who dares to dress like her — not just a clash but a dogfight of pattern, color and texture, with a dollop of feather — and few who communicate as she does, in an ornery gush of inspired expletives.
As Greene, the much put-upon wife of David’s manager, played by Jeff Garlin, Essman is more than just a fan favorite. She is an instigator — “a scene-driver,” as she put it — whose costumes and insults get even wilder on the 12th and final season of “Curb,” now airing Sundays on HBO. She is also the person who, her castmates said, makes David crack up most regularly.
Essman, 68, and David, 76, the “Seinfeld” co-creator who stars as a heightened, less scrupulous version of himself, have known each other since their stand-up days in the ’80s. He cast her, in what was then a small part, after seeing her withering set at a roast of Jerry Stiller in 1999. “She was filthy, profane and hilarious — exactly what I wanted,” David wrote in an email.
He didn’t give her much to go on — no character description or deep back story, just telling her that the show would be improvised and that he and the on-screen Susie would have, he said, “a contentious relationship.” The rest was on Essman.
She delivered. Her Susie is completely sure of herself, and her outré style. And the haranguing turned out to be an unlikely emotional geyser: “What women especially respond to in her is her comfort with her anger,” she said.
It was a long, generational shift. “I remember my father telling me, when I go on dates, that I should just listen to men and not
talk,” Essman said, and gave a Susie-level curse. “I’m not doing that.”
She doesn’t see the big deal with four-letter language. “If you say, you know, the friggin’ or the freakin’ instead of the (expletive) — you mean the same thing, right?” Still, that’s not how most of her interactions start. “People come up to me on the street, and they’re visibly disappointed when I’m gracious and kind,” she said. “I mean, I’ve seen people’s face drop.”
More often, they thrust out a phone and beseech her to call their husbands a few unprintable epithets. “I’m like, ‘I’m buying a melon! I’m not in the mood!’ ” Essman said. But she obliges.
It’s not just viewers who vie to have her tell them off. “I wish she could have been upset with me,” said a co-star, comedian Richard Lewis, envisioning a spinoff where she just yells at him for 24 minutes straight. “She never seems to be struggling — this hostility just flows out of her. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. She’s the funniest hostile character I’ve ever seen on television.” Given the chance, “I would have gone out of my way to screw up the scene just to make her angry at me.”
No one needs to yell “Cut!” to finish Essman off, either. “The scene ends with Larry just losing it completely,” Lewis said. And when he breaks, “it gives permission to everybody. It’s like an orchestra of laughter.”
In its two decade-plus run (with a six-year hiatus, between Seasons 8 and 9), “Curb” has expanded its cast and its range of minor indignities that spiral wildly and absurdly, from a lack of cashews in a trail mix to Susie smacking her lips after each sip of a beverage, setting off Larry. But production-wise, little has changed.
There are written outlines for each episode’s story, which David works on for months with showrunner Jeff Schaffer, and a few plot points to stick to. The vast majority of dialogue is still improvised. And the characters definitely haven’t evolved or learned to do better.
“There’s no growing and sharing in comedy,” Essman said. “And there shouldn’t be. The comedy is that you keep making the same mistake over and over again.”
She wasn’t a series regular until about the eighth season, but the show changed her life, giving her more visibility as a performer, and a financial bedrock. “I look around my house, and I say, ‘This is the house that Larry built,’ ” she said.
Everyone swears she is not much like her “Curb” character. “Not only is she is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met in the business, she’s one of the smartest,” Lewis said.
David added that, in their time working together, “She’s become one of my closest friends. Brilliant and profound when it comes to life issues.”
On “Curb,” co-stars calibrate to her, said J.B. Smoove, who, as one-half of TV’S best bromance, plays David’s outrageous housemate Leon.
“Leon’s thing is, he gives Larry good-bad advice,” he explained. “Hopefully he’ll take my advice over this argument that he’s having with Susie.” But when she “spits venom,” he said, “I do pull back, because they cancel each other out.”
In the group dynamic of “Curb,” he said, “everybody has a unique power.”
“It’s like a bunch of mutants from ‘The Avengers,’ ” he continued, imagining how great it would be to see a rendering of the Marvel superheroes with the “Curb” cast members’ faces.
Essman’s version of the Iron Man suit is Susie’s bonkers layering of bejeweled, befurred, be-snaked outfits and mis-sized hats (created with costume designer Leslie Schilling).
“I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard as in my fittings,” Essman said.
On set, the cast awaits her entrance, like a fashion show reveal. Though she did ruffle David when she arrived this season with a new pixieish cut. “Larry was like, ‘It’s very short.’ Yeah. So what? What do you care? I have hair; you don’t.”
Though some co-stars doubted that this was really the last season for “Curb” (given the lengthy break between seasons), Essman was more certain. She grew teary-eyed at the thought. It was a job, and a life experience, unlike any other, thanks mostly to David’s vision — “I completely trust his comedic instincts” — and the production’s camaraderie.
As Greene, “I never have to think about being funny,” she said, “which is a truly amazing release.”