Analytical as ever, the comic has strong opinions about disgraced peers like Cosby. He says the audience is always right (even about his #MeToo joke).
In some ways, the world of Jerry Seinfeld is the same as it ever was. He’s still the singularly recognizable stand-up, the star and co-creator of his eponymous TV sitcom and the host of a Netflix talk show, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” At 64, he is still playing dozens of live dates a year and, on Friday, will announce the return of his residency at the Beacon Theater with 20 new shows in 2019.
But the comedy world that Seinfeld inhabits is in a tumultuous period. While some performers feel uneasy about what they can or can’t say onstage, several prominent stars have been disgraced by scandals of their own making. Bill Cosby, once one of Seinfeld’s creative heroes, was convicted of sexual assault in April and sentenced to prison in September. Roseanne Barr had her resuscitated ABC sitcom canceled in May after she posted a racist tweet. Louis C. K., who last year admitted to several acts of sexual misconduct, has resumed performing in clubs again, prompting an outcry from some audience members and rebukes from fellow comics .
These are complicated and uncomfortable issues that Seinfeld knows he can’t avoid, given his standing in the industry, and that he is still thinking through and processing in real time. On Wednesday, over lunch at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side, he spoke about the current cultural moment, which he said felt necessary. “We’re figuring it out as we go along,” Seinfeld said. “And there’s something very stimulating and empowering about that. We don’t really know what the rules are.”
Seinfeld also spoke about his approach to stand-up in this anxious period, the performers who have transgressed and the artists he still admires. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.
Your Beacon Theater residency ran in 2016 and 2017, but not in 2018. What made you want to return to it in 2019? When we decided to try it out, I just loved playing there. Then it just seemed like we had done it a lot, and you never want to overstay your welcome anywhere. And then I missed it. It’s my vision of what I consider to be the ideal stand-up experience, which is a beautiful old theater in someone’s hometown, where they know every inch of the neighborhood. You see someone at Madison Square Garden, or Radio City or Carnegie Hall, each one is a totally different experience. You’re not getting the same interaction with that performer.
Is it still important for you to work out new material in smaller clubs? I went out to Long Island yesterday, got home at 7, and then grabbed a sport jacket to run out of the house. My wife says, “Where are you going?” I go, “I got to go to a club.” She says, “Why?” We’re married 18 years, you still have to answer these questions. I go, “I need to try out some stuff.” Real comedians want to go on every single night.
There’s a lot of tension in comedy right now, for many reasons. Sure. I was saying to an audience recently, “Why do you even come out here for this? I guess you just like to see somebody sweat.” Chris Rock gave me a theory that in the old days, when you’d go see Neil Young or Jimi Hendrix, you saw the whole artist. Now, most music artists, that person’s talent is just a component of what they’re making. But with a comedian, you’re still getting the whole artist: the writer, the director, the presenter. All their talent is on display in one package and that’s intense. It’s why stand-up is still so popular.
So you feel that anxiety, too? Of course. With Cosby and Louis and Roseanne. The thing about being in comedy is, “We hate you, get off the stage” is what we’re used to. Every comedian has that as part of their life. Getting booed, yelled at, hated. So you almost don’t notice it. You either have the skin for it or you don’t.
There are the people who were punished for their behavior offstage — we’ll come back to them. For those people who believe they’ve been penalized for things they’ve said onstage, are they entitled to a sphere of protection in their performances? No, I don’t agree with that. Because the audience automatically filters what you’re saying. You know how many people are around from when I started? I started with hundreds of guys and women, 99 percent are gone. And some of them were great. Why are they gone? Every reason you can name. Every human frailty there is. Every hairline crack in your personality gets pulled on — let’s see if we can make it a gash and then push you into it. That’s what happens in stand-up.
How do you think you avoided these pitfalls? I was pretty lucky. In the ’70s, I was surrounded by cocaine and alcoholism. But because I had no interest in it, I never saw it. I have never seen cocaine in my life. Seriously. I knew it was going on, but I was on another track. I would just go, “Nah, that’s not for me.” I think I was lucky to have a natural aversion to things I saw as toxic. And that covers a wide range. A wide range.
And now having a family helps? Oh, yeah. Once someone’s else life depends on you keeping it together, it’s easier to keep it together.
Do you feel you now have to be more careful about what you say in your own act? No. I don’t really go into areas that cause problems. I have a #MeToo bit about weather girls: “I think the weather girls need to calm down a little bit on TV. We’re trying to adapt to new guidelines just handed down, in a very fluid situation. You could pitch in a little bit with the insane cocktail outfits on local TV at 9:30 in the morning.”
And you feel your audiences approve of that bit? Oh, yeah. But if you make a mistake, which we all do, they tell you and you go away from it and you don’t do it. Or, if you want to do it, you do it anyway. The rodeo aspect of stand-up is what I missed the most when I was doing the TV series. I loved the raw, rough-and-tumble, sweaty, tense moments of it. You’re so coddled in these other realms of show business. And stand-up is the opposite of being coddled. You’re just flung into a mob.
Do you think comedians learned the wrong lessons in that earlier era, and came away believing they could do whatever they wanted? You can’t do whatever you want. You can only do what works — if you want to have a career. What I do onstage is what the past 300 audiences decided worked. That’s good, that’s not good. You have to make the audience laugh a certain amount or they don’t come back. That’s why I wear a suit. It’s a signal: I’m not loafing here. I’m about this.
Are you grateful these days that your comedic muse didn’t lead you down a more political path? I like to pursue my own idiosyncratic avenues. If I thought I could do something there that the average comedian can’t do — but I watch Bill Maher or Seth Meyers and I go, I can’t do that well with that; they’re great at it. But I can talk about raisins in ways other people can’t.
That’s important too. I hate the presumption of importance. I don’t like when comedians think what they’re doing is important. That’s not a comedic perspective, for me. I was watching some W. C. Fields with a friend the other day. We could not believe the timing, the material, the performances. Perfect. We wouldn’t change a thing. That’s how eternal comedy is. What political material from 15,20 years ago do you want to hear? None of it, really. The content of it isn’t, largely, comedic. It’s rhetoric.
Do you have a distaste for college crowds? I’ve never experienced that.
In the new season of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” you say, “It’s so weird that colleges have become places of restricted thought, as opposed to thought freedom.” No. I said, “I heard someone say—” That’s what I said. It got changed to, “I said.”
So you don’t object to playing colleges? No! I play colleges all the time. I would never say there’s any place I don’t like these audiences. My job is the opposite of that. I want to make them like what I do. I don’t always succeed but that’s my job. And never blame them, never. The worst possible situation — the deadest, most hostile crowd — I don’t care. It’s still my puzzle. That’s a professional attitude that I’d never ever compromise.
Is it too soon for Louis C. K. to be performing again? No. It’s the way he did it that I think people didn’t like. Some people didn’t like that he’s doing it at all. We know the routine: the person does something wrong. The person’s humiliated. They’re exiled. They suffer, we want them to suffer. We love the tumble, we love the crash and bang of the fall. And then we love the crawl-back. The grovel. Are you going to grovel? How long are you going to grovel? Are you going to cry? Are you going to Jimmy Swaggart? And people, I think, figured they had that coming with Louie — he owes us that. We, the court of public opinion, decided if he’s going to come back, he’d better show a lot of pain.
