Jason Alexander talks Seinfeldisms, and why George Costanza would be aiming for the White House
Seinfeld star Jason Alexander thinks that his most famous comedy creation George Costanza would have his eyes on the Trump White House in 2019.
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Seinfeld star Jason Alexander has theory about where George Costanza would be setting his sights in 2019 – the highest office in the land.
US film, stage and television actor Alexander was nominated for seven consecutive Emmy Awards for playing the whining, wheedling, wheeling and dealing Costanza in the revered sitcom and thinks that more than 20 years after the finale, the character would have lost none of his hilariously misguided chutzpah and sense of entitlement.
“I think George would be going ‘if he can be president, I can be president. There’s gotta be a way. I gotta be in that guy’s cabinet. Who is he losing this week? There’s gotta be something I can do’,” says Alexander with a laugh, agreeing that there are some similarities between his famous comedy creation and the current occupant of the White House.
“I think George would go to a five-day law school and get a law degree based on nothing and somehow wheedle his way into the Trump cabinet.”
Alexander freely admits to being a vocal Trump critic – and regularly lambastes him on Twitter – but he laments that state of public debate in his homeland and around the world at the moment, which he says has both sides of politics shouting at each other from the fringes rather than engaging in meaningful debate and focusing on the things that unite rather than divide.
“We have been very successfully divided from each other and any feeling of national identity and national unity where progressives actually care about conservatives and conservatives actually care about progressives, it’s very hard to find,” he says.
“If I go into a room full of conservative thinking people and we have a conversation, I find all kind of connective tissue between us.
“But if we are dealing with social media, or the media in general, a lot of people are making a lot of money to keep us yelling at each other. So it’s a tough time.”
It’s one of the reasons he loves coming to Australia, as he will next year for the Master Of His Domain live tour, and on his three previous visits here he says has admired the country’s sense of egalitarianism and unity.
Mind you, his last trip was ten years ago, during which he emceed the wedding of Geoffrey Edelsten and Brynne Gordon and one hopes our admirable national qualities haven’t met the same demise as the happy couple.
“That feeling of some sort of national character as symbolised in the word ‘mate’ is something I wish I had in my own country,” he says.
“I wish we could recapture this feeling that we are all Americans and we are all in this together.
“I could feel that disintegrating 20 years ago, I could feel that slipping away and it’s a thing about Australia that really strikes me and I am so warmed by it every time I come.”
In his live show, the multi-talented producer-director-writer-performer Alexander will sing, recount stories and take questions on his long and varied career from Pretty Woman to Duckman to Broadway, as well as his experiences as a semi-professional poker player and a husband of nearly 40 years and father of two children.
But inevitably, as one of the most successful and celebrated sitcoms in television history, it’s Seinfeld that audiences most want to hear about.
Even though the “show about nothing” wrapped up in 1998 after nine series and 180 episodes, it his aired in repeats ever since and remains one of the most popular television comedies globally.
It still screens here on streaming services Foxtel, Stan and 10 Play and a massive deal – rumoured to be well over half a billion dollars – was recently signed that will see it stream on Netflix from 2021 and earn a fortune for creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.
Alexander admits he is regularly out-nerded by the Seinfeld freaks in the audience – but he respects their passion.
“Everybody knows more about Seinfeld than I do,” he says with a laugh.
“If I was on a Seinfeld trivia contest, I would suck so bad, the reason being that most of the episodes I have only seen once.
“I shot it, I watched it once and went ‘great, that came out well’. I don’t sit down and look for myself on television so I haven’t seen those episodes in 20 years.”
Still, every day is a constant reminder of just how huge it was in an era before cable and streaming, when there was a choice of just a handful of free-to-air channels, and more than 30 million people would tune in each week.
Characters and catchphrases such as the Soup Nazi, Festivus, serenity now, yada-yada-yada, sponge-worthy and close-talker remain part of the pop culture lexicon to this day.
“People shout things at me,” says Alexander.
“I get a lot of ‘can’t stand ya’, I get a lot of ‘serenity now’, I get a lot of ‘yada, yada, yada’, I get a lot of ‘master of your domain’, I get a lot of ‘the jerk store called …’ — the whole panoply of Seinfeldisms come at me.”
Alexander says that as a mad Trekkie himself (he once appeared in an episode of Voyager), he understands the level of fandom and believes that for many viewers, the show means more than snappy writing, spot-on observational comedy and an endless roster of inspired supporting characters.
“I understand it for Star Trek even if I don’t always understand it for Seinfeld,” he says. “In both cases you are talking about a fan base where the show is something more than just entertainment or a distraction.
“I get people all the time who were going through terrible, dark things or losing people in their lives or illness or whatever it may be and say ‘you guys kept me laughing, you kept me hopeful, you kept me positive’.
“So both of the fan bases for those shows are holding to the show, or loving the show for something more than just few laughs or a couple of fun lines. And it’s very flattering to be a part of something like that.”
While Alexander is still in touch with and has a “deep and abiding affection” for his castmates Seinfeld, Veep star Julia Louis Dreyfus and Michael Richards, they rarely socialised while making the show and have largely gone their separate ways since.
He’s closer to Jerry Stiller, who played his father Frank, Wayne “Newman” Knight thanks to their shared theatre background and Bryan Cranston, who he directed in a Broadway play.
“There are often occasions, whether it’s a birthday, where you send an email or a phone call if there is something to discuss, or I’ll see Jerry is playing in town and I’ll go to his show, or Larry invited me to replace him in his Broadway show – there are always occasions where we will bump into each other and those are great occasions.
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“But that’s about it. We see each other at the conventions. But I find every time Julia wins an award, which I think is every other week, there’s a reason to send her an email saying ‘ahh, you got another one ya devil, God bless you’.”
Seinfeld is available on Foxtel, Stan and 10 Play.
Jason Alexander, Master Of His Domain, Palms At Crown, February 12-15 (sold out); Crown Theatre, Perth, February 18; State Theatres, Sydney, February 22 (sold out), 23.