South Side moves to HBO Max last year, and I remembered that right at the beginning of the quarantine, you were in the last episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, last season?
It was the last episode, last season. Yeah, that sounds right to me. Look, man, I haven’t ever said this to anybody, but I’ll go out and share with you, because it’s something I think about any time I watch or someone says they love Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Thank you.
I grew up as a comedy writer, so to speak. I grew up idolizing Larry David. He’s one of my heroes. Seinfeld was such a big thing in my family, and Curb Your Enthusiasm was such a big thing. Just Larry’s style of humor is such a big thing, so imagine my excitement when my agent calls is like, “Hey, I got you a part on Curb Your Enthusiasm. You’re going to play a fireman.”
Right.
I was like, “You’re lying. This is one of the happiest days of my life.” I actually did research on firemen, so I could actually throw out some firemen lingo. One of the things that I found out is that believe it or not, firemen in almost every district, in every jurisdiction, or whatever you want to call it, they don’t have beards. They don’t have beards because it doesn’t allow the seal to completely close off the mouth area when they have to go into the fire. I know that I have a beard. I wasn’t going to cut my beard for one day of shooting. I was a little bit like, “Oh man, the second I show up in this fireman outfit with a beard, people are going to know that I’m inaccurate.” It might have been a little bit in my head.
I knew what the scene was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about Larry opening up the spite coffee store, next door to Java Joe’s. Again, this is my hero. It made me a little bit nervous. We shot the scene, but I can honestly say nothing funny came. Nothing funny came to me. I feel like Larry was standing around trying to figure out what’s funny about this scene again. We were going to do this whole riff about, “Why are there no Black presidents on the wall? You got Jefferson and Washington.” We did it. It was okay, but you could tell it wasn’t hilarious.
Then the scene aired, and I was like, “Man, I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm, but I don’t even get to be a part of a classic Curb moment.” It’s haunted me ever since that day. It’s just one of those actor things, especially when there’s not a script. People may not know this, but there’s never a script for Curb Your Enthusiasm. You’re just supposed to go in and riff with Larry, and they would just save the funniest stuff. There was just nothing funny that really happened that day between us, and I was crushed. I’m driving home from the set that day, just dead inside. Just that crushing feeling, “Man, I had a chance to do a see with Larry David and nothing. Nothing.”
Fast forward, about two years later, I get another call from my agent, “Yo, you’ve known Issa for years. She wants you to do Insecure.” I go to that set and granted, this time there’s a script, so it’s already a little bit different. I sit down on set, and we rehearse the scene, and it’s already kind of funny, and expertly written by my friend, Amy Aniobi. But let me just say this, by the third take, me and Issa were cracking up. You could tell what I was giving her, what she was giving me, there was a chemistry there. By the time I left that set, it was such an opposite feeling, driving home. Wow. From the ad-libs to the improv, to the lines that were written. It was getting funnier as we did more and more times. It was just the complete opposite.
Here are two HBO shows that I love, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Insecure, could not have had a different experience shooting both. I still kind of want to run into Larry one day, and just be like, “Yo, I don’t know what was up that day.” Because I don’t think he would fault me. I actually think that he was just in a quiet, sort of subdued mood that day, too. We want to think that we can always control these things, but especially when there’s no script involved, and no real roadmap, I just feel you’re going to have some on days, you’re going to have some off days. I’m learning how to not beat myself up about that Curb appearance, but I think the Curb appearance has helped me a lot.
Maybe you can hit up Larry. Maybe there’s another fire. [Laughs]
Absolutely. I know the head showrunner of that show, and I’ll just be like, “Hey, maybe the fireman shows back up. Come on Larry. Hey, the fireman’s back.” [Laughs] Seriously, I am just a huge fan of that show. I have a million Curb Your Enthusiasm ideas. Maybe one day I could just pitch him an idea, and say, “And then at the end, the fireman shows back up.” [Laughs]