Jason Alexander has had quite a career.
This week, the “Seinfeld” star is on the new episode of the “At Home with The Creative Coalition” podcast, talking to The Creative Coalition CEO Robin Brook about everything from the last season of the iconic sitcom to his role in “Pretty Woman”.
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During the conversation, Alexander explains why the decision to end “Seinfeld” after nine seasons came from the cast themselves.
“We took ourselves off the air. We called it quits,” he says. “The reason I think we did it — Jerry [Seinfeld] may have had other reasons like burnout and wanting to have a life — but the reason we discussed at the time was we all thought that the show could continue to be funny because the writers were always really good and they would find these amazing guest people to come in all the time. So there was a constant flow of a new sense of humour. And we thought funny is not the obstacle here.”
He continues, “The obstacle was that after nine seasons, the audience could more or less anticipate how any of these characters would react in any given situation. There was nothing new we could do to these characters and still have it be ‘Seinfeld’… Since the show had career-wise done everything it was going to do for us and it had taken care of us financially extremely well, the mutual thought was why don’t we tuck it in before the audience says this kid’s been up too long.”
Talking about his real-life inspiration for the character of George Costanza, the actor says, “The four pages read to me like a Woody Allen script so I went ‘alright, I’ll do Woody Allen.’ That’s where the glasses came from and where the really thick New York accent came from as an idea. I got put on tape in New York and I went ‘I’ll never see this. You’re not gonna get a job this way.’ And about a week later I got a call from Larry and Jerry… and it all clicked.”
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Recalling another iconic role of his, Alexander talks about being hated for the character played in “Pretty Woman”.
“I was known around the world as the asshole who tried to rape Julia Roberts so women hated me,” he says. “I would walk down the street and women would say mean things to me. I got punched many times. I got spit on by one woman. It was a rough year.”
