Larry David spent decades making millions of Americans laugh through his hit television shows, but when it came to his own life story, the comedy legend wasn’t eager to see it in print.
Author Blake J. Harris, who spent six years researching Larry David’s life and writing his biography, “Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David,” told Fox News Digital that the “Seinfeld” co-creator and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star had a blunt reaction after reading the manuscript.
“I wanted him to reflect on his career, you know, the 75 years that are in the book. And so I said, ‘Larry, you know, it’s been six years. Do you have any big macro thoughts?’” Harris said of the conversation with David.
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“I thought that he would maybe say like, ‘Yeah, it’s really so unlikely that I succeeded’ or ‘I really was so unprofessional.’ The things that he had sort of talked about in the book already. But instead, he took the question a little bit differently, and he said, ‘Yeah, if I could do it over, I wouldn’t do it.’ Meaning the book, he wouldn’t do the book,” Harris said.
Despite David’s response, Harris said the comedian quickly realized his comment had hurt the biographer’s feelings and tried to reassure him.
“The real-life Larry David, who is a pretty sweet guy and has compassion, he noticed that that made me feel bad, and he didn’t intend for me to feel bad. So he said, ‘No, no, Blake, not because of anything you did, you did a great job, you did a great job.’ He repeated that, which I appreciated. He said, ‘I just don’t want people knowing about me,’” Harris said.
David, 79, co-created “Seinfeld” alongside comedian Jerry Seinfeld in 1989, serving as a writer and executive producer for the show’s first seven seasons. The sitcom ultimately ran for nine seasons, with David returning to write the series finale. David later starred in HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which ran for 12 seasons. The Emmy-winning comedian is widely regarded as one of television comedy’s most influential figures.
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But when Harris first set out to write the biography in early 2020, getting David on board was not an easy task. Harris said he initially reached out to David’s longtime collaborator and executive producer, Jeff Schaffer, but David was far from enthusiastic about the idea.
“Larry’s initial response to Jeff Schaffer about me doing the book was, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding me? Why would somebody do this to me?’” Harris recalled. “He was very, very unhappy about this prospect of a book being written about him.”
Harris said he believes David’s hesitation stemmed from both his desire for privacy and his humility.
“In his mind, he just doesn’t see himself as book-worthy,” Harris said. “He sees there’s politicians and founders and great world leaders and scientists and all these people who deserve to have books written about them, and he doesn’t see himself as one of those people.”
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To break the stalemate, Harris said he took a different approach, one he described as “George Costanza-inspired.” After being introduced to David through comedy writer Alan Zweibel, Harris asked Zweibel to tell David he wanted their first phone call to follow one strict rule: He wouldn’t ask about either of David’s hit shows. Instead, they would talk exclusively about the New York Yankees.
“Larry and I spoke two days later about the New York Yankees for 45 minutes,” Harris said. “And I guess I passed the test, and we started speaking regularly.”
Although David began speaking with Harris, he was still hesitant about having a biography written about him.
“I reflected with Larry, who doesn’t really reflect all that often. And I said, ‘Is it true that when Jeff Schaffer first told you that I want to write this book about you, that you were not very happy?’ And he said, ‘Oh no, I was so angry. I was so unhappy,’” Harris said.
“And I said, ‘Larry, well, it’s, you know, midnight, New York time. It’s nine o’clock LA time. Why are you on the phone with me then? No one’s holding a gun to your head.’ And he said, the greatest words I’ve ever heard. He said, ‘I kind of like you.’ And so, Larry David kind of liked me and that sort of gave me the green light to keep moving forward,” he added.
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Over the course of researching the biography, Harris spoke with hundreds of people, including David’s family, friends and longtime collaborators. Among them was “Seinfeld” co-creator Jerry Seinfeld. Harris described the duo as the “Paul McCartney and John Lennon of television.”
“In Larry and Jerry’s relationship, it was very clear to me, and Jerry conveyed this, that Larry was the pessimist and Jerry was the optimist,” Harris said.
Harris explained that while the two were working on “Seinfeld,” David would often stare at a whiteboard used to map out episode ideas, worrying that they wouldn’t be able to fill it or come up with jokes as funny as those from the previous season.
“This is a thing with Larry even to this day. He’s always worried that he’s not [going to] be able to come up with as good of ideas as he had in the past, and Jerry would say to Larry, ‘Larry, don’t worry about 22 episodes,'” Harris said.
Harris said Seinfeld encouraged David to focus on one episode at a time rather than worrying about the entire season.
David expressed gratitude in the book for Seinfeld’s ability to “talk him off the ledge” when those doubts surfaced, Harris said. He also learned that the two never had major fights, only minor disagreements over comedic details, including a playful argument over whether former New York Yankees players Moose Skowron or Hank Bauer had the funnier name for a “Seinfeld” script.
“You could just hear Larry and Jerry shouting at each other, ‘Moose Skowron!’ ‘No, Hank Bauer!’ in the office. And it was heated in the sense of just joking,” Harris said.
“But then at the end of the day, unsurprisingly, they found a way to get both names in the script and both of them got to put their imprint on this. And they never really had any actual fights,” he added.
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Beyond David’s professional relationships, Harris said one of the biggest revelations from his years of reporting was discovering just how different the comedian is from his selfish television alter ego, particularly when it comes to his family.
On “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” David plays a fictionalized version of himself who has no children, a decision Harris said reflected the comedian’s belief that parenting was too serious a responsibility to be funny. In real life, however, Harris said David’s two daughters are his greatest source of pride, surpassing even his accomplishments on “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
“There’s that famous adage to not meet your heroes. I met mine and I left more impressed than when I started,” Harris said. “The part of him that we don’t see on the TV show is that he’s actually kind of a sweetheart. He has a lot of human compassion that’s not expressed on the show. If you were to spend time with him, the very first thing that he would talk about, or the thing that he’d be most proud to talk about, is not ‘Seinfeld’ or ‘Curb’ or even the New York Yankees. It would be his daughters.”
Although David was initially reluctant to participate in the biography, Harris said the comedian’s objections to the finished manuscript had little to do with unflattering portrayals. Instead, David took issue with passages where he believed he wasn’t funny or came across as too nice.
“The only times that he really had a problem were where he wasn’t funny and where he thought he came off as too nice,” Harris said.
Ultimately, Harris described David’s journey as an unlikely American success story.
“It’s really not just a story about Larry David, it’s a story about the 1970s and 1980s comedy scene, it’s a story about television and, above all else, it’s the story about how this guy who was so unlikely to succeed, but in America, this land of opportunity, somehow, someway, his talent rose to the top, and he was really a late bloomer. So, I think it’s really inspiring in that regard.”