Larry David was dreading Seinfeld’s 5th season before it aired in 1993. Biographer Blake J. Harris says the co-creator’s drive to keep every episode good had made running the sitcom feel unbearable, even as it helped establish his career.
On the Oct. 23 episode of Obsessed: The Podcast, Harris said David would “rather spend a year in prison than do another season of Seinfeld.” He traced that feeling to David’s own expectations: “That torture largely came from the pressure he put on himself to come up with good ideas, which is a constant theme in the book.”
Harris’s biography, Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, explores how that anxiety shaped David’s work. Harris said David questioned how much attention the book gave his worries about generating ideas after reading a draft. Harris’s reply: “No, we haven’t, ’cause that’s all anyone talks about.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has also described the strain of making the show. On the Sept. 1 episode of Friends Keep Secrets, she acknowledged tension and disagreements over creative decisions.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to do anything really well, and it takes a lot of work, and you’re going to butt heads,” she said. She also recalled, “We had a lot of fun making it.”
David co-created Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld and won 2 Emmys for his work on the series. The show ran from 1989 to 1998, completing 9 seasons and winning 10 Emmys overall.