Seinfeld ushered in a new era of sophisticated TV comedy, while also making its primary cast
members extremely wealthy. But with that success came reports of misbehavior, bad decisions,
and controversial actions. Here are the most scandalous things the cast of Seinfeld ever
did.
In the fall of 2007, Jessica Seinfeld, wife of Jerry Seinfeld and mother of three kids
with the comedian, published Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good
Food. It was a cookbook with a powerful angle: her numerous recipes for child-friendly fare
packed extra vitamins and nutrition because they all secretly contained flavor-masked
fruit and vegetable purees.
The book shot to the top of The New York Times bestseller list, but in January 2008, Jessica
was targeted in a lawsuit from another cookbook author, Missy Chase Lapine, who alleged that
Deceptively Delicious, quote, "brazenly plagiarized" from her similarly named, vegetable-smuggling
cookbook, The Sneaky Chef.
Jerry got himself involved in the affair when he appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman
and teased Lapine and her filing, earning himself charges of defamation from The Sneaky
Chef author. However, both Seinfelds were eventually cleared of wrongdoing.
In 2010, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled in Jessica's favor, noting
that stockpiling vegetable purees for covert use in children's food is an idea that cannot
be copyrighted. Meanwhile, the defamation suit was thrown out of court after a judge
ruled that no reasonable viewer of Letterman's show would have believed that Seinfeld was
conveying actual facts about Lapine during his appearance.
After his time on Seinfeld ended, Michael Richards put character acting on hold for
a while in order to return to stand-up comedy, which he'd explored with some moderate success
back in the 1970s. In November 2006, Richards booked a plum gig to perform at The Laugh
Factory in West Hollywood, one of the most famous and influential comedy clubs in the
country.
Now, there are comedians "bombing" on stage, and then there's what Richards did on the
night in question — he essentially blew up his career in just a few minutes. Kyle
Doss, an African-American man, was in attendance that night, and he told TMZ that he, quote,
"playfully" heckled Richards during his comedy routine. Rather than ignore or gently tease
Doss back, Richards came undone, unleashing a stream of profane, racially-charged, and
racial epithet-laced vitriol.
To paraphrase, Richards told Doss that in another era of history, he could have brutally
attacked the man for speaking out of turn. Richards then used the N-word five times in
under three minutes — all of it caught on video. Richards later apologized on The Late
Show with David Letterman.
However, the professional damage was done. Since the incident, Richards has acted on
five occasions, including Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie and as himself on Larry David's
Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In May 1993, Jerry Seinfeld was out and about in New York City's Central Park when a young
woman caught his eye. Seinfeld subsequently asked for her phone number. The young woman
whom the 38-year-old comedian and sitcom star found so attractive was 17-year-old Shoshanna
Lonstein. When grilled by radio host Howard Stern about the budding relationship with
someone 21 years his junior, Seinfeld told the host:
"This is the only girl I ever went out with who was that young. I wasn't dating her. We
just went to a restaurant, and that was it."
That may be true, but the relationship quickly became serious. Later in 1993, Seinfeld made
trips to visit Lonstein at George Washington University, and Lonstein took frequent weekend
trips to Los Angeles, where Seinfeld lived at the time. Lonstein told Details that she
transferred to UCLA to be closer to Seinfeld, but that they finally split up in 1997. According
to Lonstein, she, quote, "wanted to run around and play," while Seinfeld was busy all the
time making his TV show.
In late 1999, 45-year-old Jerry Seinfeld married 28-year-old Jessica Sklar, a Tommy Hilfiger
publicist he met in August 1998 after noticing her in a Reebok Sports Club gym on the Upper
West Side of Manhattan. Sklar was in a bit of a complicated situation, and the resultant
and scandalous love triangle enthralled New York gossip column writers.
Sklar was already married when she met Seinfeld, and a newlywed at that — she'd gotten hitched
to prominent theater producer Eric Nederlander just two months previously. But that relationship
was already on the rocks before Sklar went ahead with the wedding. Weeks before she met
Seinfeld, she'd started to move out of the apartment she shared with Nederlander.
Nevertheless, it wasn't a good look for Seinfeld, who was painted in the press as a celebrity
swooping in and stealing a woman away from a less famous man. As Nederlander later claimed
to Page Six,
"I was manipulated, misled and completely caught off guard by Jessica's infidelity.
Jerry and Jessica have no respect for decent values. They deserve each other. I'm going
on with my life."
Years after Michael Richards' obscene rant, Jerry Seinfeld came under fire for what could
be called dismissive comments about race and gender in comedy, a world in which he's a
giant and influential figure. In a 2014 appearance on CBS This Morning, Seinfeld was asked about
the criticism that his streaming talk show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, featured
a preponderance of white comedians. The comedian snapped back and said that he did not like
the question. Seinfeld then went on to say:
"People think [comedy] is the census or something, it's gotta represent the actual pie chart
of America. Who cares? [...] Funny is the world that I live in. You're funny, I'm interested."
Seinfeld's comments were later criticized by a number of major publications, ranging
from Time to The Independent. But in 2015, he doubled-down on his remarks. On the radio
show The Herd, he recalled an exchange with his teenage daughter, in which she labeled
something as "sexist." He went on to claim,
"They just want to use these words. 'That's racist. That's sexist. That's prejudice.'
They don't know what [...] they're talking about."
The English language is a constantly changing thing. Phrases that might have been socially
acceptable at one time may become offensive as the general public grows more sensitive
and socially conscientious. Take for example the word "gay." Today, it's an innocuous word
interchangeable with "homosexual."
Back in the '80s, according to NPR, it also meant homosexual, but because LGBTQ+ people
weren't widely accepted, gay also meant "very bad" or "lame" or "not manly enough." And
in 2012, ex-Seinfeld star Jason Alexander used "gay" in that fashion. In an interview
on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, host and guest discussed the sport of cricket.
Alexander told Ferguson,
"You know how I know it's really kind of a gay game? It's the pitch. [...] It's not like
a manly baseball pitch; it's a queer British gay pitch."
In the wake of criticism and backlash, Alexander apologized, writing in a statement,
"I should know better. My daily life is filled with gay men and women, both socially and
professionally. I am profoundly aware of the challenges these friends of mine face and
I have openly advocated on their behalf. So, I can only apologize and I do."
It's always a little embarrassing to get fired from a job, regardless of the circumstances
or even the position. It happens to the best and the worst of us — and in 1979, it happened
to Jerry Seinfeld. It's even more wince-inducing 40 years after the fact, because of the workplace
that callously terminated Seinfeld years before he'd co-create and star in one of the most
popular sitcoms of all time.
The comedian-actor was unceremoniously dismissed from his role on the broad and silly ABC comedy
series Benson, a spinoff of the provocative Soap, in which smart aleck butler Benson goes
on to perform the same job for a governor. In three 1980 episodes, Seinfeld played Frankie,
a courier who fancied himself a stand-up comedian who would launch into his routines at inopportune
times.
Per The New York Times, Seinfeld and the show's producers couldn't get on the same page about
how Frankie should be played. They ultimately agreed to disagree, and the Benson producers
got rid of Seinfeld. But as Seinfeld claimed in a 2006 interview with the New York Post,
the producers didn't inform him that he was fired until after he showed up for rehearsal.
Understandably, Seinfeld was upset, telling the New York Post,
"That doesn't happen in stand-up. Once you get to a certain level, they don't make you
go back to the beginning."
The traumatic experience of getting fired led Seinfeld to put all his effort into his
comedy career.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Seinfeld co-creator Larry David wrote the show with
a thesis statement in mind:
"No hugging, no learning."
That made Seinfeld a lot darker and more brutally funny than most other sitcoms of the 1990s,
such as moral-enriched fare like Growing Pains and Full House. But the show reached new depths
in 1996, when it killed off a major character. Susan Ross, played by Heidi Swedberg, was
George Costanza's fiancée, even though he didn't seem to like her all that much.
However, George was off the hook of marriage and a single guy again when Susan died after
ingesting fatal amounts of glue by licking the inexpensive wedding invitations that George
had selected. The real reason Susan died? Several Seinfeld big shots didn't want to
work with Swedberg anymore. In 2015, Jason Alexander told Howard Stern,
"Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring."
Alexander revealed that he confided his frustrations to co-star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who went on
to tell him that she too had a hard time adapting to Swedberg's acting style. When David heard
all the negative chatter about Swedberg — namely that the main cast found her difficult to
work with, he got rid of her by getting rid of Susan.
For the most part, Julia Louis-Dreyfus' history is squeaky-clean. However, the winner of a
whopping eight acting Emmy Awards and Veep star did endure some minor controversy in
2014 over a Rolling Stone cover that featured a pretty major faux pas. In promoting Veep,
a comedy about government and politics, Dreyfus appeared in a tasteful pose, with the U.S.
Constitution seemingly tattooed on her bare back.
The problem had less to do with Louis-Dreyfus appearing in the buff and more to do with
a glaring error that would have most embarrassed the actor's junior high civics teacher: Her
back tattoo featured the distinctively large signature of early American politician John
Hancock. However, Hancock didn't sign the Constitution — rather, his huge name appears
at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence. Louis-Dreyfus handled the very small scandal
with grace and humor, tweeting,
"In my defense, 'I was in a drunken stupor.'"
Later, the actor posted a doctored image of herself as a baby bearing the John Hancock
signature, and quipped,
"John Hancock not part of tattoo. It is a birthmark."
Seinfeld was such a popular and successful show that it was a hard act to follow for
its main cast members. But despite raking in a ton of money and accolades from their
nine seasons on Seinfeld, actors Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michael Richards, and
Jason Alexander all wanted to continue appearing in things — and TV networks were eager to
green-light projects starring such beloved stars. The only problem? Audiences didn't
seem to care about any of those post-Seinfeld shows starring Seinfeld stars.
Over the years, the embarrassing notion that the performers were under some kind of "Seinfeld
Curse" persisted, such was the abysmal failure of their 2000s TV projects. For example: The
Michael Richards Show and Alexander's Bob Patterson each were cancelled with fewer than
10 episodes airing; Louis-Dreyfus' Watching Ellie made it 17 installments; and Seinfeld's
bickering couples game show, The Marriage Ref, faded away after 2 short seasons. Thankfully,
the unofficial curse was unofficially broken when Louis-Dreyfus took on the title role
in HBO's Veep — a comedy that won the Emmy for outstanding comedy series three times
in its seven-season run.
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