CURB YOUR ENSUSIESSMAN
The Comedienne Speaks Out on Being Fair – and Foul
by Dave Lefkowitz
Note: This article first appeared in Long Island Woman, Dec. 2008.
Gentility. Self-control. Soccer mom and devoted daughter. Newlywed.
These words might fit a lot of women, but you’d be hard-pressed to use them to describe comedian and actress Susie Essman – that is, until you meet her in person. That’s when you have to reconcile this smiling, tastefully dressed and sparkling-eyed Susie with the Susie she plays so memorably on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
If you’ve seen the show even once, you’re probably smiling already at a memory of Susie Green lacing into her sneaky, corpulent husband, Jeff, with a level of scathing invective that would make George Carlin blush and send Don Rickles into therapy. Of course there’s a little Susie Essman in Susie Greene, but my expectations (or hopes) of being verbally thrashed were soon dashed. Jeff Greene would feel lucky to be married to the attractive and downright nice woman facing me at our window table at Le Monde on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. I, however, couldn’t help but be a smidgen sad that the Susie freely answering my questions while sniffling through a headcold and sipping vegetarian soup was not going to thrust her finger in my forehead and call me a fat fuck.
“My stand-up comedy has always been kinda blue,” Essman notes, “But in real life, people are disappointed when they meet me. I see people on the street, they’ll be very gracious, and I’ll say something very nice back. But they’re visibly disappointed because they want me to be yelling and screaming and cursing. My theory about Susie Greene is that although people respond to the cursing, they’re really responding to her comfort with her anger. She’s completely reactive and has no censor. There’s something very liberating about that, which is why all wives love that character. I give them that release. And I feel liberated by it as well.”
Proudly, Essman takes credit for the evolution of Jeff’s wife from a peripheral character to the most reliably explosive presence on “Curb.” “In the beginning, Larry David had done an hour special for HBO, and they asked him to do a series from that. Jeff’s wife existed, but she wasn’t in it. In fact, that first season, I was in three episodes, and in two of them, I was an innocuous nothing. But one show, `The Wire,’ has Jeff letting a Fresh Air Fund kid into our house, and he robs us blind. Larry wanted Jeff’s wife to just scream and curse and rip him a new one, which was the direction he gave me. So I went crazy on him.”
Continues Essman, “And we never discussed the character, ever. We just started playing, and it evolved in a dialogue of the unconscious. A very organic process. Instinctually, I came up with how she dresses from a composite of people. And Larry realized he could make Susie’s anger a character `thing.’ I mean, from the start, Larry knew he wanted a woman who was facile with language. He cast me after seeing me on the Friar’s Roast for Jerry Stiller on Comedy Central.
“The funniest part is that I’ve known Larry and Jeff [Garlin] for years,” adds Essman, “and in that scene in `The Wire,’ Larry just kept telling me, `go further, go further!’ – and I was going pretty far. But he pulled me aside and said, `I really want you angry. Make fun of Jeff’s fat.’ I said, `Larry, I can’t do that; Jeff’s my friend. I don’t wanna make fun; it’s not nice.’ I never like to make fun of anything physical on somebody. But he said, `go `head! He knows you’re acting. Just do it.’ And thus the fat fuck was born.”
Essman, 53, was born in Manhattan and raised in Mount Vernon, perhaps another surprise for those who hear in Susie Greene the squawk of a middle-aged, transplanted Long Island termagant. “I know a million people from Long Island, and I’ve probably worked every Jewish country club on Long Island, but no, I’m from Westchester. And I was not brought up religiously at all.” Her father, a doctor, died in 2001 of esophageal cancer, but her mom is still going relatively strong at age 83. “She’s healthy and she looks incredible, but she’s complicated. She still finds every possible thing to complain about you could imagine. Still, she looked gorgeous at the wedding.”
The wedding to which Essman refers was her own. Just four days prior to our lunchtime chat, Essman had married her longtime boyfriend, commercial real-estate broker Jim Harder. “I planned my wedding in three days,” Essman laughs. “It was at the Friar’s Club, with the ceremony in the George Burns Room and the reception in the Milton Berle Room.” Asked which comedians attended, Essman replied, “none, it was just family. But Jimmy is Catholic, so he’s one of nine. Which means `just family’ adds up.”
Since this is Essman’s first walk down the aisle, it’s only natural to ask why now? – especially since this union came with an instant family: four teenagers from Harder’s previous marriage. “Timing is everything,” explains Essman. “Jimmy and I dated for five years, but if I’d met him ten years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle the kids. Even now, it can be weird. I went from being this hip New York single comedian to being a soccer mom overnight. I always thought I was so cool. But once you have teenagers, you’re an idiot. I was the queen of the eye rollers, and now they roll their eyes at me. It’s unbelievable.”
Of course, Essman is quick to say she loves the kids and being their stepmom, and points out the best silver lining of all: “You gotta get your material somewhere. And teenagers are like mentally ill people with car keys.”
More seriously, the comedienne stresses the importance of guiding the kids toward their passions. “I want to be that role model for them. Everybody told me, `what do you mean you’re gonna be a comedian? That’s ridiculous! You can’t make a living.’ Well, when my stepdaughter was in high school, her guidance counselor told her not to apply to F.I.T. because she couldn’t get in. I would see her getting C’s in chemistry but staying up till six o’clock in the morning hand-sewing beads on something. So I encouraged her and told her, `don’t listen to these people.’ Now she’s at F.I.T. in fashion design, and she couldn’t be happier.”
Actually, it was other people’s advice that pushed Essman into stand-up comedy to begin with. “One year for Chanukah – or, if I may re-phrase that, one year for Chhhhhhhhhhhanukah – my older sister got a little reel-to-reel tape recorder, which I co-opted from her. I started doing talk shows. I’d walk around interviewing everybody thinking I was Johnny Carson. Or I was writing plays and song parodies, standing on the kitchen table performing them for my brother. He’d come home with his friends after school – I think they would all smoke pot, I’m not sure – and they’d be like, `Let’s get your sister in here to perform for us!’”
“I didn’t know from stand-up comedy,” Essman continues. “I used to watch `The Ed Sullivan Show’ and see these guys get up and tell jokes. Alan King, Jackie Mason, Jackie Vernon – they were funny, but it seemed very male and didn’t relate to me at all. I wanted to be like Carol Burnett and do character stuff.” But, for a time, spotlights took a backseat to burning the midnight oil. “I graduated as an Urban Studies major from SUNY College at Purchase, applied to law school, got in, didn’t want to go, thought about going into political journalism and started taking acting classes, instead. But those weren’t fulfilling, so I went into a funk and a depression and…waitressing. And that was only bearable because I would go back into the kitchen and imitate all the customers.”
Which is when her co-workers suggested she try an open-mic night. “I was scared out of my mind. I wrote five minutes which I ended up doing in two and a half because I was so nervous. But two guys in the audience came over and said `we’re opening a club in a couple of months – Comedy U. We’d like you to come work for us.’ This was after my first performance. I gave them my number, but I never got onstage again, `cause I was scared to death. But a couple of months later they called and said, `Hi, remember us? We opened the club. Come down and do ten minutes.’ So I sat around with some friends and wrote some new stuff, which was successful, so they said, `we want you to work on Thursday nights, our “all-women’s night”.’ And that’s where I met Joy Behar, Rita Rudner… Eventually, they gave me my first weekend spot, paying me 20 dollars. I still have that $20 bill.”
Essman fondly recalls those early days for other reasons. “It was a great downtown Village audience. All NYU kids and gay guys. I got tons of stage time in a very protective environment – unlike the uptown clubs which were incredibly competitive. After about two months, I remember standing in the backstage of Comedy U and saying, `this is exactly what I was meant to do with my life.’”
Pretty soon, she did move uptown, opening for the likes of Richard Belzer and Gilbert Gottfried. “There used to be posters all over town. I remember I was in the Village, and I saw Gilbert’s poster. I looked down, and in big block letters it said, `Opening Act: Susie Essman.’ Standing in Sheridan Square, I burst into tears. I was really a comedian.”
Now she’s a comedian, actress, wife, mom and something of a feminist icon. How does she manage all that? “It helps that I’ve always been extremely health conscious,” Essman notes. “I started doing yoga when I was 16 and became a vegetarian many years ago. I believe that old Adelle Davis thing, `you are what you eat.’ Without sounding trite or too pretentious, my body is my instrument, and I like it when I feel lighter. I do all the annoying things you have to do at my age, like getting a mammogram every year, because you have to take care of yourself with preventive medicine, both regular and alternative. And exercise is so important.”
She’s also careful to keep her lifestyle reasonable. “I don’t go on the road that much – never did. But thanks to `Curb’ and all those years of paying my dues, I can command a lot of money for doing stand-up. Thank God, because I’ve got kids to put through college!”
As we exit Le Monde, the fan in me takes over and asks Essman for both an autograph and – “for my wife” – just one little insult about me spoken into my tape recorder. I braced for her now-famous “Curb” phrase, only to be regaled by a variant: “Sweetie, you are married to a Jew-faced fuck. I’d say it louder but we’re in a restaurant.” Bliss.
SIDEBAR
On temptation: Every now and then, I want a bacon cheeseburger. But I wouldn’t dare, because I’m afraid of what it would do to my body.
On being on: I don’t try to be funny most of the time. I’m not “on.” How many times in this conversation have I tried to be funny? Not that much.
The honeymoon: We’re waiting until December because we’re just too busy. But we’ll go somewhere relaxing and nice. Probably Miami Beach. It’s one of our favorite places.
Her first big role: 1988’s “Punchline,” playing Sally Field’s coach. “They flew me out to L.A., and I worked on the movie for five months. All of a sudden I’m on a movie set with Tom Hanks and hanging out in Sally’s house with the Oscars there. That was kinda cool.”
Her mantra: Focus on the art, and the rest will come.
Her scariest warning (from a New York Times interview): I’m usually nice, but if you push me, I can go Susie Greene on you.
- 30 -
