Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Larry Thomas, "Seinfeld" "Postal" actor/Soup Nazi: Mr. Media Interview, Pt. 2
(Return to Part 1)
ANDELMAN: Now, as funny as Seinfeld and David and the producers thought it was, there was someone there who didn’t think this was one of their better episodes, right?
THOMAS: Right. Oh, my God! Who later came back to haunt me again, actually. Michael Richards hated this script so much that he spent the entire working week, it’s usually four days of rehearsal or actually kind of five days of rehearsal, and on the fifth day, you shoot it that night before the audience, but they cut off a day this week because it was in October during the Jewish holidays. And so we only did four days and shot it on the fourth night, but all four days, he was just bending anyone’s ear that would hear him on how terrible a script this was.
I don’t know who I felt more sorry for, me or Spike. Not only was I on “Seinfeld” for the first time, but it was my first really major television guest spot after 15, 18 years of trying to get one. And so I had to listen to it. Spike, of course, went with his first script for “Seinfeld,” so he had to listen to it. It was just basically Andy Ackerman and Larry David and Jerry trying to assuage Michael Richards all week, “Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it.” Every time he had to do a scene, whether it was like the scene where he gets the armoire stolen and then Elaine doesn’t get his soup and he gets really upset about it, he kept stopping in the middle of the rehearsal going, “This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why am I so upset? I lost a major piece of furniture here, and I didn’t get a cup of soup, why am I so upset?” Andy Ackerman would have to keep saying, “But that’s the joke, Michael, the soup is that good.” And Michael said, “See, that’s what’s wrong with this episode. It’s an episode that doesn’t make any sense. It’s not based in reality.” He was really actually very careful about his reality even though he watched the show through all the nine seasons. He had the most non-sensical reality of all. But I guess from what I’ve heard, he used to have to be talked into a lot of it. And, in this particular one, he just really had to be talked into it, and then he actually came up to me a few times and would say, “Why is your character so mean? I don’t understand it.” I would be going like I got cast, alright? I’ve already done that part of this job.
ANDELMAN: It’s a job, Michael. It’s keeping me in acting class a little longer.
THOMAS: Yeah. My audition explained the way I’m playing it. I don’t need to change it, and I don’t really need to explain it to anybody.
ANDELMAN: Now, you said that you had contact with him again later? There was another issue?
THOMAS: Well, not really. I never met him again. I did during the finale briefly. I had him sign my Soup Nazi script, and he was very nice. But what I meant was in November 2006, when season seven came out, Sony had a major publicity tour planned for me in New York and Toronto to make appearances and do radio interviews and television shows to promote season seven. That’s the same day that the news broke about the problem he had at the Laugh Factory in L.A.
ANDELMAN: Right.
THOMAS: So, bit by bit, everywhere I went, every interview got cancelled because nobody wanted to promote “Seinfeld” that day. That was the day that it actually came out in the stores. The story that I just told you about Michael, I really don’t tell very often because I don’t want to put him in a bad light. He is an artist, and what he did with Kramer was pure genius. I still am amazed to this day, if you look at the development of the character through the show, it was comic genius. And so I don’t have anything against him at all, but I’m afraid people will take that story out of context and think he was a bad guy. I don’t think he was. I think it was just part of his genius that he questioned everything.
ANDELMAN: Larry, did you do a commentary for the season seven DVD?
THOMAS: Yeah. There’s a little bit of it on there. We sat there for two hours. They used a little bit of it, but I really love the bit they used. Out of everything we talked about, I love the bit they used because I had told a story about sitting in the bleachers watching the Jerry living room scene develop. The most rehearsal time is always spent in Jerry’s living room because, if you watch any episode, those are really the longest scenes. Everything sort of develops and is rehashed and talked about there, and then they go out and flashback or show it to you. But I would sit there in the bleachers, and we didn’t rehearse the Soup Nazi stuff until the last day anyway because they had to build the soup kitchen, but I would just sit there watching. A wonderful actor named Thom Barry who was Elaine’s building superintendent, sat there with me, and we would just watch these guys rehearse and, as actors, say, “Is this Eden, or what? This is like paradise.” These four incredibly talented funny people take a really good script, have a really great director like Andy Ackerman, and they just get to spend each day hashing through it, working on it, and it was just so fabulous to watch.
One particular day, they were in Jerry’s living room. It was a scene in this episode where George and Elaine had decided to confront Jerry about how obnoxious his relationship was with Schmoopie, who was played by Ali Wentworth, who is now married to George Stephanopoulos, oddly enough, just to throw that in there. But they were about to confront him, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, just off the cuff, just said, “You know what, Andy, wouldn’t it be funny if just as George is sort of preparing to confront Jerry, I sort of got up and walked around the back of the couch and went to the front door, and just as George is about to go, “Isn’t that right Elaine?” the door slams, and I’m gone.” And Andy just, he was so relaxed, he’s just such a great director, he goes, “Yeah, try it.” And for me, I’ve done so much theater, and this is very much like theater, and I’m just going, “Oh my, wow,” and she does it, she just tries it, and Andy goes yeah, “That works. Let’s work it up, and we’ll do it for Larry,” because Larry David would have the last word on everything. And so they did. Tom and I just got to sit there and watch with our jaws open, what paradise that was, and they did it, and it’s in the episode. It’s one of the really funny moments.
ANDELMAN: Now, Larry, after the episode aired, what’s the first sign you had that your life has changed forever?
THOMAS: Um, I think later that night, I got a couple of calls from the East Coast, because I live on the West Coast, and I got a couple of calls from the East Coast saying, “Are you watching the news?” And I said, “Why?” They said, “They keep airing scenes of you or a scene of you from the ‘Seinfeld’ that aired tonight, and they’re comparing you to some real soup vendor in New York!”
I didn’t even know, at that point, there was a guy. I think I had been told on the set that it was based on somebody, but I didn’t know to what extent. I’d never seen him or heard of him, and so I turned on the news, and sure enough, in every news report, every late news report, they would be airing this comparison between me and this guy. There was a still of me from the show and a still of him, and then they would show my scene, and that continued for the rest of the weekend, all through the weekend. So I had had a feeling at that point that this wasn’t just any episode of “Seinfeld,” but I don’t think I realized till years later just what place it would take in the sort of lexicon of what “Seinfeld” did to our society. At Christmas, when I hear people talking about re-gifting, and you go to a party, and they’re talking about double-dipping, and you have to stop and say, wow, that show had such an effect. So, yeah, I kind of began to realize that having played this character was going to change my career.
ANDELMAN: You actually met Al Yeganeh, the inspiration for the Soup Nazi, right?
THOMAS: Yeah. The funny thing is I never got to meet Al before any time I played the character. I played him the first time without ever having seen or heard Al, and then I did the second time as well, which was in the finale, which was in 1998. Mine was in 1995. In 1999, I was in New York, and I got contacted by “Extra” and “Inside Edition,” and they wanted to have me go with them to his stand, and they were gonna interview him and introduce him to me and see how he’d react. So I did, and he was a very interesting character, Al. He really does get to raving and ranting quite a bit, especially if you bring up Jerry Seinfeld.
ANDELMAN: Which, of course, no one did.
THOMAS: He hates Jerry. He equates the name Jerry Seinfeld with being called the Soup Nazi and every bad thing about it where he really doesn’t equate anybody else with it. He doesn’t know the entertainment business, so he doesn’t realize that long before that episode, that was his nickname by the Letterman writers, was the Soup Nazi, and he was already called that. So Jerry’s to blame for everything. So he ranted and raved about Jerry a little bit, and then when they said, “This is the actor that played the character that was supposed to be you on the TV show, what do you have to say to him?” He said something like, “He’s an actor” or “He’s a good actor maybe, but he’s not a chef. He does not make soup. He does not make soup like I do,” or something like that. They said, “Would you shake hands with him?” and he said, “Yeah, of course,” and stuck out his hand, and I shook his hand, which I thought was really interesting.
But unfortunately, the two shows never aired any of that because they felt like it wasn’t newsworthy that we shook hands. They felt like it only would have been newsworthy if we started screaming at each other. You’re a journalist, and you gotta cringe when you realize that journalism has come to that.
Years later, we were doing “The Odd Couple” in New York in 2002, and I went up to his place again and stuck my head into his little kitchen and re-introduced myself, and we actually had a conversation that time, and he, once again, complimented me on my work. He said he had seen one of the scenes on the “Oprah” show or something, and he thought I was funny. So we talked, and he actually gave me soup, which was delicious, by the way. I have to say that his seafood bisque was knee-buckling. It was really good. So yeah, I haven’t seen him since then, but I may be one of the few people in the world that has had a really good experience with Al Yeganeh.
CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
(Return to Part 1)
ANDELMAN: Now, as funny as Seinfeld and David and the producers thought it was, there was someone there who didn’t think this was one of their better episodes, right?
THOMAS: Right. Oh, my God! Who later came back to haunt me again, actually. Michael Richards hated this script so much that he spent the entire working week, it’s usually four days of rehearsal or actually kind of five days of rehearsal, and on the fifth day, you shoot it that night before the audience, but they cut off a day this week because it was in October during the Jewish holidays. And so we only did four days and shot it on the fourth night, but all four days, he was just bending anyone’s ear that would hear him on how terrible a script this was.
I don’t know who I felt more sorry for, me or Spike. Not only was I on “Seinfeld” for the first time, but it was my first really major television guest spot after 15, 18 years of trying to get one. And so I had to listen to it. Spike, of course, went with his first script for “Seinfeld,” so he had to listen to it. It was just basically Andy Ackerman and Larry David and Jerry trying to assuage Michael Richards all week, “Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about it.” Every time he had to do a scene, whether it was like the scene where he gets the armoire stolen and then Elaine doesn’t get his soup and he gets really upset about it, he kept stopping in the middle of the rehearsal going, “This doesn’t make any sense to me. Why am I so upset? I lost a major piece of furniture here, and I didn’t get a cup of soup, why am I so upset?” Andy Ackerman would have to keep saying, “But that’s the joke, Michael, the soup is that good.” And Michael said, “See, that’s what’s wrong with this episode. It’s an episode that doesn’t make any sense. It’s not based in reality.” He was really actually very careful about his reality even though he watched the show through all the nine seasons. He had the most non-sensical reality of all. But I guess from what I’ve heard, he used to have to be talked into a lot of it. And, in this particular one, he just really had to be talked into it, and then he actually came up to me a few times and would say, “Why is your character so mean? I don’t understand it.” I would be going like I got cast, alright? I’ve already done that part of this job.
ANDELMAN: It’s a job, Michael. It’s keeping me in acting class a little longer.
THOMAS: Yeah. My audition explained the way I’m playing it. I don’t need to change it, and I don’t really need to explain it to anybody.
ANDELMAN: Now, you said that you had contact with him again later? There was another issue?
THOMAS: Well, not really. I never met him again. I did during the finale briefly. I had him sign my Soup Nazi script, and he was very nice. But what I meant was in November 2006, when season seven came out, Sony had a major publicity tour planned for me in New York and Toronto to make appearances and do radio interviews and television shows to promote season seven. That’s the same day that the news broke about the problem he had at the Laugh Factory in L.A.
ANDELMAN: Right.
THOMAS: So, bit by bit, everywhere I went, every interview got cancelled because nobody wanted to promote “Seinfeld” that day. That was the day that it actually came out in the stores. The story that I just told you about Michael, I really don’t tell very often because I don’t want to put him in a bad light. He is an artist, and what he did with Kramer was pure genius. I still am amazed to this day, if you look at the development of the character through the show, it was comic genius. And so I don’t have anything against him at all, but I’m afraid people will take that story out of context and think he was a bad guy. I don’t think he was. I think it was just part of his genius that he questioned everything.
ANDELMAN: Larry, did you do a commentary for the season seven DVD?
THOMAS: Yeah. There’s a little bit of it on there. We sat there for two hours. They used a little bit of it, but I really love the bit they used. Out of everything we talked about, I love the bit they used because I had told a story about sitting in the bleachers watching the Jerry living room scene develop. The most rehearsal time is always spent in Jerry’s living room because, if you watch any episode, those are really the longest scenes. Everything sort of develops and is rehashed and talked about there, and then they go out and flashback or show it to you. But I would sit there in the bleachers, and we didn’t rehearse the Soup Nazi stuff until the last day anyway because they had to build the soup kitchen, but I would just sit there watching. A wonderful actor named Thom Barry who was Elaine’s building superintendent, sat there with me, and we would just watch these guys rehearse and, as actors, say, “Is this Eden, or what? This is like paradise.” These four incredibly talented funny people take a really good script, have a really great director like Andy Ackerman, and they just get to spend each day hashing through it, working on it, and it was just so fabulous to watch.
One particular day, they were in Jerry’s living room. It was a scene in this episode where George and Elaine had decided to confront Jerry about how obnoxious his relationship was with Schmoopie, who was played by Ali Wentworth, who is now married to George Stephanopoulos, oddly enough, just to throw that in there. But they were about to confront him, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, just off the cuff, just said, “You know what, Andy, wouldn’t it be funny if just as George is sort of preparing to confront Jerry, I sort of got up and walked around the back of the couch and went to the front door, and just as George is about to go, “Isn’t that right Elaine?” the door slams, and I’m gone.” And Andy just, he was so relaxed, he’s just such a great director, he goes, “Yeah, try it.” And for me, I’ve done so much theater, and this is very much like theater, and I’m just going, “Oh my, wow,” and she does it, she just tries it, and Andy goes yeah, “That works. Let’s work it up, and we’ll do it for Larry,” because Larry David would have the last word on everything. And so they did. Tom and I just got to sit there and watch with our jaws open, what paradise that was, and they did it, and it’s in the episode. It’s one of the really funny moments.
ANDELMAN: Now, Larry, after the episode aired, what’s the first sign you had that your life has changed forever?
THOMAS: Um, I think later that night, I got a couple of calls from the East Coast, because I live on the West Coast, and I got a couple of calls from the East Coast saying, “Are you watching the news?” And I said, “Why?” They said, “They keep airing scenes of you or a scene of you from the ‘Seinfeld’ that aired tonight, and they’re comparing you to some real soup vendor in New York!”
I didn’t even know, at that point, there was a guy. I think I had been told on the set that it was based on somebody, but I didn’t know to what extent. I’d never seen him or heard of him, and so I turned on the news, and sure enough, in every news report, every late news report, they would be airing this comparison between me and this guy. There was a still of me from the show and a still of him, and then they would show my scene, and that continued for the rest of the weekend, all through the weekend. So I had had a feeling at that point that this wasn’t just any episode of “Seinfeld,” but I don’t think I realized till years later just what place it would take in the sort of lexicon of what “Seinfeld” did to our society. At Christmas, when I hear people talking about re-gifting, and you go to a party, and they’re talking about double-dipping, and you have to stop and say, wow, that show had such an effect. So, yeah, I kind of began to realize that having played this character was going to change my career.
ANDELMAN: You actually met Al Yeganeh, the inspiration for the Soup Nazi, right?
THOMAS: Yeah. The funny thing is I never got to meet Al before any time I played the character. I played him the first time without ever having seen or heard Al, and then I did the second time as well, which was in the finale, which was in 1998. Mine was in 1995. In 1999, I was in New York, and I got contacted by “Extra” and “Inside Edition,” and they wanted to have me go with them to his stand, and they were gonna interview him and introduce him to me and see how he’d react. So I did, and he was a very interesting character, Al. He really does get to raving and ranting quite a bit, especially if you bring up Jerry Seinfeld.
ANDELMAN: Which, of course, no one did.
THOMAS: He hates Jerry. He equates the name Jerry Seinfeld with being called the Soup Nazi and every bad thing about it where he really doesn’t equate anybody else with it. He doesn’t know the entertainment business, so he doesn’t realize that long before that episode, that was his nickname by the Letterman writers, was the Soup Nazi, and he was already called that. So Jerry’s to blame for everything. So he ranted and raved about Jerry a little bit, and then when they said, “This is the actor that played the character that was supposed to be you on the TV show, what do you have to say to him?” He said something like, “He’s an actor” or “He’s a good actor maybe, but he’s not a chef. He does not make soup. He does not make soup like I do,” or something like that. They said, “Would you shake hands with him?” and he said, “Yeah, of course,” and stuck out his hand, and I shook his hand, which I thought was really interesting.
But unfortunately, the two shows never aired any of that because they felt like it wasn’t newsworthy that we shook hands. They felt like it only would have been newsworthy if we started screaming at each other. You’re a journalist, and you gotta cringe when you realize that journalism has come to that.
Years later, we were doing “The Odd Couple” in New York in 2002, and I went up to his place again and stuck my head into his little kitchen and re-introduced myself, and we actually had a conversation that time, and he, once again, complimented me on my work. He said he had seen one of the scenes on the “Oprah” show or something, and he thought I was funny. So we talked, and he actually gave me soup, which was delicious, by the way. I have to say that his seafood bisque was knee-buckling. It was really good. So yeah, I haven’t seen him since then, but I may be one of the few people in the world that has had a really good experience with Al Yeganeh.
CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING!
© 2007 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.
Labels: Al Yeganeh, Alexandra Wentworth, Andy Ackerman, George Stephanopoulos, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Larry Thomas, Michael Richards, Seinfeld, Soup Nazi, Spike Feresten
¶ 9:30 PM
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