EXCLUSIVE

The following is excerpted from No Lessons Learned by HBO and Lorraine Ali (Black Dog & Leventhal). Copyright © 2025. On sale Sept. 30.

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Larry David’s character, Larry David, wasn’t trying to be funny when he stumbled each week into hilariously tragic situations as if they were unavoidable potholes. He was simply a natural at saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, and even better at screwing up the chance to apologize. But a great comedy like Curb doesn’t just wander into ludicrous situations. It takes hard work to create the illusion of effortless humor, which is exactly what the HBO series did over 12 seasons, 120 episodes, and 24 years.

TV Larry’s debacles took meticulous planning and skilled execution by the real Larry David, along with a dedicated crew that included writers, producers, editors and talent. Curb’s team brought Susie’s rants, Jeff’s lies, Cheryl’s suffering and Leon’s bad advice to life, scene by scene, set by set, edit by edit.

Each new chapter of Curb presented unique challenges, but for the sake of brevity and humanity’s shrinking attention span, we’ll focus on just one season: 2009’s Seinfeld reunion story arc, aka season seven. David went to great lengths to reunite the NBC sitcom’s original cast and crew, and resurrect the original set on the original soundstage so that the “show within the show” appeared absolutely authentic. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here’s how the season came to be, from Larry’s first scribblings to the show’s final edits.

Dawn of a New Season

JEFF SCHAFFER (WRITER, DIRECTOR AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, ­SEASONS 5-12): A new season usually starts at the end of the season before it, when Larry says ‘Curb is finished! There will never be more Curb. Curb is done. Dead. Stick a fork in it.’ A few months later, he calls and says, ‘I’m not doing another season.’ We go, ‘OK.’ Then he says, ‘I only have one idea.’ ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ we ask. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it’s a waste of time.’ Then . . . we’ll talk about it. We’ll end up working on something that Larry is convinced will never, ever see the light of day. We figure out a season arc, and that’s when it’s clear that a new season is actually happening.

Well, it’s clear to me. Larry still refuses to think we’re actually making the show. It’s not until we have seven or eight shows written I tell Larry, “Hey, we need to call HBO and tell them we are doing another season so we can crew up.

LARRY DAVID (CREATOR, WRITER AND STAR): I have these notebooks with ideas, and Jeff [Schaffer] has his own notebooks. We pick through them like the Mission: Impossible team for ideas. We’re looking to combine stories and ideas that seemingly have nothing to do with each other. The main thing is the premise and the story have to be funny. They have to be ideas that make us laugh, like pee splashing on Jesus in the bathroom and it looks like he’s crying. It has to be something that tickles us.

SCHAFFER: Larry is fearless about jumping in and starting, even when we don’t know where we’re going to end up. He’ll say, “Let’s put these things together and see what happens.” And I’ll be like, “Well, where’s it going to go?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, that’s what we’re going to find out.” He’s great at starting, and I’m always thinking about finishing. We somehow meet in the middle.

DAVID: From start to finish, it takes around 18 months to make a season; six months of writing, six months of shooting, and six months of editing.

SCHAFFER: Each Curb episode is actually written three times. The first time is the outline. We throw it up on a dry-erase board (just like we wrote Seinfeld) and do comedy geometry until the stories all intersect in a pleasing way that pays off at the end. (That’s the toughest part. As a measure of how difficult this part is: In November of 2020 we shot in the middle of the pandemic when there were no vaccines yet, all on location with an older cast. Why? Because we had already written it. Larry was like, we wrote it; we’re doing it. And I’ll deal with the consequences.) The second time the show is written is on set where these incredible improv actors make magic happen, and every scene is a live rewrite generating lots of funny options. And then the show is written for the third and final time in the edit where we choose which takes and jokes to use.

The Outline

David is renowned for creating airtight outlines that form the scaffolding around each scene, episode, and season. The beams of this sturdy plot structure support the freewheeling improv performances that take place within, allowing for a final seamless narrative where all the disparate subplots converge.

DAVID: We’re always looking for a great story arc, and they’re not that easy to come up with. They’re more in the vein of a movie premise. That’s how the Seinfeld reunion came about. We knew it was something we could have fun with . . . and we had no other ideas at the time.

SCHAFFER: We knew we weren’t going to do the Seinfeld reunion that NBC wanted. [We wouldn’t do] corny. We were going to do a Curb-style Seinfeld reunion, which meant Curb Larry was going to get the cast back together and do a reunion for his own selfish reasons. He wanted to get back with Cheryl. His whole agenda was self-serving. All those things that people wanted in a Seinfeld reunion, like, “Oh, I can’t wait for Jerry and Elaine to get together and the show is going to end with a wedding!” We gave it to them, but off-camera, because the two split up before the reunion.

DAVID: We decided that she’d already had a kid with Jerry.

SCHAFFER: The choice was to deprive people of exactly what they wanted. It was a very Curb choice.

The season seven finale, “Seinfeld,” presented unique challenges, even for a comedy as unique as Curb.

SCHAFFER: There was an added level of complexity because it was a Curb episode, but it was also part of a supposed Seinfeld special. And knowing that Curb Larry is only doing the reunion to get Cheryl back, it became logical that he’s going to lose Cheryl to Jason. So once we knew that’s where we were going to end the season, we had to aim everything toward that conclusion. He was going to almost lose her, then get her back, then lose her for good when he sees the ring stain on Julia [Louis-Dreyfus]’s wood table. [Context: Larry attends a party at Julia’s house where he is blamed for leaving a ring stain on her wood table. His defense is that someone else did it because he “respects wood”; he spends the rest of the episode interrogating everyone he encounters: “Do you respect wood?”]

Casting

With season seven, David reunited Seinfeld’s original cast, wrote a redeeming storyline for Michael Richards (Kramer) after the comedian faced widespread criticism for a racially charged tirade during a 2006 stand-up set, and introduced Mocha Joe (Saverio Guerra) as Larry’s new nemesis.

LAURA STREICHER (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER): Some of Curb’s story arcs were reliant on specific guest stars signing on for the season but were written before Larry approached them about it. Mel Brooks for The Producers season. Lin-Manuel Miranda for the Fatwa/Hamilton arc. Even Jerry, Julia, Jason and Michael for the Seinfeld reunion. And I would say to him, “Larry, you’ve written a couple episodes now. Maybe it’s time to make the calls and ask if they want to do it?” But he’d never worry about it, he’d just keep writing, and, when the time came to finally ask, somehow it always worked out for him … Clearly Larry David is the king of manifestation. I mean, imagine writing a whole season and them being like, “I don’t think so, Larry.” What would we have done?

DAVID: I don’t remember having to talk to the cast about it beyond one or two conversations. It wasn’t a big deal. Jerry was onboard immediately, and so once we had Jerry, then getting the others wasn’t that hard.

JERRY SEINFELD: I did think it was a good idea because I knew that doing a conventional network-type reunion show was never going to be appropriate for us. So being on Larry’s show was a perfect way to do it.

JASON ALEXANDER ­(GEORGE COSTANZA): Initially I had concerns that a reunion show wouldn’t be a good thing to do, or a fun thing to do. We hadn’t worked as a group in 10 years. So we’re all 10 years older. So the first thing I’m thinking is, what was barely charming on characters in their thirties and forties may be completely devoid of charm in their forties and fifties, and that may be a mistake. Would we be able to resurrect that sense of ensemble play that we had so effortlessly on our show? But then also just the pure technicality of, it’s hard enough to improvise a scene when it’s two people, but when you’ve got six people?! “My turn, no, my turn..” I thought this was a daunting task that could show us as being less than we were. But the experience was glorious; the ensemble feeling that we had, the affection that we had for each other, it was immediate. And walking back onto those exact replicas of our sets was like a time tunnel. It was just astonishing.

“BEING ON LARRY’S SHOW WAS A PERFECT WAY TO DO IT.” -Jerry Seinfeld

DAVID: I have to give credit to Jason. He was playing a really prickly version of himself, which he did the whole season. Remember the scene in the restaurant where he wouldn’t coordinate the tip? It still makes me laugh.

ROGER NYGARD (EDITOR, SEASONS 6-8, 10-12): Larry needs someone who’s going to fight back and fight with him, so the actors from Seinfeld are the perfect foils [for him] and they work with whatever you give them. They’re good at creating conflict. I remember asking Julia Louis-Dreyfus, “What does it take for you to make a scene funny?” And she said, “I need to have something to push back against, then I can make it funny.” And that’s what Larry does, he pushes back against stupid social mores or somebody’s dumb rule and he gets to have the arguments. So they were the perfect match for Larry.

SCHAFFER: Obviously Larry has a longstanding relationship with all of those guys. So the improv always felt pretty natural. Jason’s playing a fun-house version of himself. Julia is playing a version of herself that is more irascible. Everyone just sort of amped it up to make Larry uncomfortable. You’re following a lot of people and a lot of stories at the end of the season; they’re coming together on a show that Larry and Jerry had to write. It was really complicated.

DAVID: I wanted to do something for Michael [Richards]. Like a little gesture for him in that episode because he was coming off of that horrible stand-up set [that went viral]. I just wanted to put him on the show. So we ended up pairing him with JB [Smoove], who was playing Leon playing Danny Duberstein.

SCHAFFER: We also brought back the crew and our staff from Seinfeld to play the people on Curb’s “Seinfeld” set, like our producer Susie Mamann Greenberg, writers assistants, our former AD [assistant director] Randy Carter. It was exhilarating to see everybody back there, and for this one brief shining moment, it was like we were on Seinfeld again.

Most of the Curb audience had no idea that the crew portrayed on the Seinfeld reunion set were in fact the original Seinfeld crew. Why did the team go to the trouble of bringing them back when no one but Curb insiders knew?

DAVID: Well, if we were shooting on the Seinfeld stage with the Seinfeld cast, why not the Seinfeld crew?

SCHAFFER: And we’re only making the show for us. I’ve always said, if Larry was making this show as a home video for himself, nothing would be different.

The Location and Set

Curb traversed the city of Los Angeles for the majority of its twelve seasons. The various homes of the Greenes and Davids were actually rented properties in Malibu, the Hollywood Hills and Brentwood. Angelenos may have noticed that Larry’s dining spots included Canter’s Deli and Don Cuco’s Mexican Restaurant. The Seinfeld reunion season moved the show back onto the original lot and soundstage where the nineties sitcom was shot. But for authenticity’s sake, Larry pushed it a step further.

ERIN O’MALLEY (PRODUCER, SEASONS 5-8; DIRECTOR OF THE SURPRISE PARTY): Larry wanted me to get the original Seinfeld set, so I said, “Sure, where is it stored?” And he’s like, “I don’t know, call somebody.” It became a quest. There were rumors that the set was at the Smithsonian. I checked; it wasn’t. So I called NBC, and they said to call Castle Rock. It took a while, but somebody at Castle Rock finally narrowed it down to a storage facility way out in the San Fernando Valley. I sent my production designer to this giant warehouse. We’re on the phone as he’s in this facility walking, walking, walking. He finally sees this strip of wood, and it says “Seinfeld” on it. And there it was, literally tucked away in a corner.

We set it up back on the CBS Radford lot. I didn’t have all the little pieces, because the guys from Seinfeld—Jerry, Julia—said that everyone took pieces when the show ended, as keepsakes. But Larry also wanted to update the set, so we were taking this iconic set and modernizing it. But it was such a bizarre thing to actually stand on that set. It was like touching history.

SCHAFFER: We re-created Larry and Jerry’s office in the same space where their actual office used to be, in Building 5. And we had their two desks facing each other, because that was how it used to be arranged. There’s also a dry-erase board on the wall in those reunion scenes, and you’ll see ideas written on there. Those were actual ideas that Alec [Berg] and I had pitched when we worked on Seinfeld that Larry said no to, so we never used them. It’s like we finally got to use them. You’ll also see that building in “The Bare Midriff” [Season 7, Episode 6], when Larry catches his assistant’s stomach to keep from falling off the roof. That’s the roof of the building where Seinfeld was written.

Production

DIRECTING

When Curb and Seinfeld collided for the reunion storyline, directors Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg and Dave Mandel had to manage a show within a show. It wasn’t always easy.

SCHAFFER: It was surreal to work back on the old set on Stage Nine, on the Radford lot in Studio City. We’d be shooting a Curb scene where Larry was watching and giving notes on a Seinfeld scene. There were the Seinfeld cameras, and then behind that were the Curb cameras where Alec and I were directing. Once, when the take-inside-a-take ended and Curb Larry walked up to give notes to the Seinfeld cast, I also had notes on the Seinfeld scene just like I used to back in the nineties. I started to walk out on set to give them, and Alec literally had to grab me by my belt, and say, “Idiot, you’re going to ruin the shot!” We were still in the scene! It was so instinctive to think, all right, the Seinfeld scene’s over. Larry’s got some notes and I’ve got some notes. It was a real mindbending situation.

We also wanted to show the set from different angles for viewers who watched Seinfeld but didn’t get to go behind the scenes. So we had the cameras follow Cheryl going behind the set, past our set PA actor (Eric André, in one of his first roles ever) and all over the place on the lot.

PERFORMANCES

In the reunion season, fictionalized Jason walks out of the production and Curb Larry steps into the role of George Costanza to keep the show going. But since the fussy Seinfeld character was initially created as an elevated version of David himself, this sowed understandable confusion on the Curb set.

DAVID: I was uncomfortable because he was doing me on the show Seinfeld, and now I’m doing him, doing me. It was weird and crazy.

SCHAFFER: You were really uncomfortable. All I could say is, “But it’s going to be so funny.” You were squirming around trying to figure out if there was another way to get to the same spot in the story arc without playing George. It was supposed to look like a big mistake, and it did. He was taking me through it. I would say to him, “How do you say this?” And he’d go, “George is getting upset!” But think about how crazy that was. There’s going to be a Seinfeld reunion, and Jason’s not going to be in it, but TV Larry is going to be playing George. Very odd.

SAVERIO GUERRA (MOCHA JOE AND LAWYER JOE D’ANGELO): When they were working on the reunion, Curb Larry thought Cheryl was having sex with Jason in the back of his car out on the lot. So Larry opened the door, and Jason’s got these two killer dogs in the back. They chase me [as Mocha Joe] down the lot, and they bite me. So Larry comes over to my cart. I’ve got a bandage on my hand. I say, “I’m going to have Jason’s dogs euthanized.” He said, “You can’t do that.” I said, “Not only am I gonna have them euthanized, but I’m gonna have it televised!” Then the director said, “No, no, that’s too much.’ And [the real] Larry said, “No it’s not. Leave it in.” That’s when I realized he edits in his head, even when he’s acting.

Props

DORT CLARK (PROPERTY MASTER, SEASONS 1-9): The glasses on the show were the real glasses he wore. They were a certain style of Oliver Peoples frames from the 1990s. He only had two pairs, one that was transitional and one that was clear.

ROSE LEIKER (PROPERTY MASTER, SEASONS 11-12): Larry’s glasses were the property department’s daily heart attack. I was only on the final two seasons and by that time, the glasses protocol was already established, but what I can say is that it is impossible to get the exact frames today. What I was told was that a few seasons before me, a producer went down the rabbit hole in search for the manufacturer of the exact pair of glasses. She was able to find someone in a small cabin in Switzerland to make four pairs, which Larry inherited. So every day, the prop department was in charge of his personal irreplaceable glasses. Remember, in some episodes we even had to drop them in a toilet or bend them!

Wardrobe

LESLIE SCHILLING (COSTUME DESIGNER, SEASONS 9-12): Everyone always says Larry just wears his own clothes. This is a bit of a misconception. Larry likes to be Larry. When I first started the show, I went to his house to “shop” his closet. It was clear to me not a lot of shopping had been done in the years when the show was on a break [a six-year gap between seasons eight and nine]. Styles had changed. Larry’s taste had not. Larry likes a simple silhouette. Slim but not tight. Fitted but not structured. I bought him new versions of the same things and maybe every gray and blue cashmere sweater in town. James Perse had a modern version of his corduroy jacket. The AG Tellis became the perfect five-pocket pant. At the end of each season Larry took his closet home so at the beginning of the next season I would ‘shop’ his closet and supplement with newer pieces as we filmed. When I see Larry in public, I like to spot the pieces I bought him.