April 4, 2024
Throughout what Larry David states will be the series' final season,The Hollywood Reporter's Jackie Strause has been checking in weekly with Jeff Schaffer, Curb Your Enthusiasm's executive producer and director/co-writer for all of this season's episodes. In this week's check-in, Schaffer gives Strause a behind-the-scenes account of getting to work with Bruce Springsteen as a guest-star in two of this season's ten episodes (so far, that is. Read on...)
Schaffer describes the filming of one of Springsteen's lines, uttered during his appearance on Curb...'s latest episode, as "one of my favorite moments ever," not just in the show, but "like, in life...That was Bruce chiming in, which was amazing. We were like, ‘What! He’s so funny.'” Schaffer was even more surprised that Springsteen agreed to be on the show at all, since reaching out to Jon Landau Management about that possibility seemed to Schaffer to be such a long shot. It turned out, however, that Bruce is a Curb Your Enthusiasm fan and was happy to play a Curb-style version of himself on the show.
Schaffer co-wrote the final season's story arc with Larry David back in 2022, and all of Springsteen's scenes were filmed in one day of December 2022, on the series' final shooting date for that year. Schaffer found Springsteen's comic improvisational skills especially impressive. “He’d seen the show, but a lot of people haven’t worked the way we do, where it’s not all scripted. Lots of things get said. And we kept telling him, ‘We’ll use the best stuff,’ so he could try everything. And he played around. He knew the basic beats, but he was in there adding and slugging around. We showed him the scenes because we were so happy with how they turned out.”
Schaffer shares with Strause many more interesting behind-the-scenes details about filming Springsteen's scenes, and also hints that there just might be some more Springsteen to be seen in this Sunday's extra-long series finale. Click here to read Jackie Strause's Hollywood Reporter article in full. But please do yourself a favor and don't read it until you've first seen the most recent episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm (Season 12, Episode 9: ""Ken/Kendra.") Click here for more information on viewing options for Curb Your Enthusiasm. Trust us; you'll be very glad that you did, and avoided any/all spoilers. Enjoy!