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Seinfeld star Jason Alexander was interviewed on the Howard Stern Show on Sirius Satellite radio this week and had some interesting revelations about the behind the scenes decisions which were made regarding one of Seinfeld’s recurring characters.
You remember how George Costanza was once engaged to be married to a woman named Susan Ross. That is until she died in a bizarre fashion from having been poisoned by licking the glue on the envelopes for their wedding invitations. But did you ever wonder why the writers decided to kill off the character at the end of the show’s seventh season?
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Well Jason Alexander finally revealed to the world why the character, who was played by Heidi Swedberg, was written off the show. Apparently the other cast members felt that their characters did not interact well with Susan.
So first they had a recurring gag about how George just did not want to get married and kept on trying to find ways to get Susan to break off the engagement. Then they came up with the absurd scenario of her death in the season seven finale which left Seinfeld fans shocked and confused.
How Susan made her exit was macabre to say the lest.
First Alexander sang Swedberg’s praises telling Stern, “The actress is this wonderful girl. I love her. Her instincts for doing a scene — where the comedy was, and mine — were always misfiring.”
But then Alexander explained how difficult it was for Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus to work with her character and said that Jerry said, “It’s fucking impossible [to work with the character].” he added that, “Julia said, ‘Don’t you wanna just kill her?’ And Larry [David] went ‘Ka-bang!'”
But Alexander felt bad about making it sound like it was Heidi Swedberg’s fault that she was written off the show and so he later made the following tweet to clarify what happened.
“Ok folks, I feel officially awful. Yesterday on @Sternshow, I retold a story I had told years ago about my personal difficulties and insecurities in playing George against the Susan that Heidi Swedberg created. The impetus for telling this story was that Howard said, “Julia Louis Dreyfuss told me you all wanted to kill her”. So I told the story to try and clarify that no one wanted to kill Heidi.”
He added, “To Heidi, I personally apologize. You are a sweetheart. I actually launched into this on Stern to defend you. But this is why I’m not a lawyer. Now everybody, calm down and just enjoy the reruns and think, “why did he think this wasn’t working? This is great.”
Read Alexander’s full comments here.
