13 Things You Need To Know About The New Season of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’
Image by HBO
By Jenny Singer, Thea GlassmanMarch 30, 2017
It’s been more than five years since “Curb Your Enthusiasm” went off the air, and we’re feeling pretty, pretty good that it’s finally coming back to the small screen.
Details on the new season, due out this year, have been few and far between, but we gathered together all the juicy tidbits out there to tide you over until our favorite curmudgeon returns. From surprising guest stars to rumors of controversy, read on.
The season has officially wrapped!
Actor Richard Lewis released the news via a Twitter post, including a picture of David doing his version of beaming (a kind of thin-lipped half smile). The show is projected to be released later this year on HBO.
The whole gang is (mostly) back.
It’s been confirmed that J.B. Smoove, Jeff Garlin, Cheryl Hines, Richard Lewis, Mary Steenburgen, Ted Danson and Susie Essman are all set to return as David’s friends/sparring partners.
David has said he writes the part before casting the actor. Case in point, Ricky Gervais, who played himself in the eighth season.
“There was a part that I thought he’d be right for, so I offered it to him,” David told The Huffington Post. “We never write anything just to get a person on the show. Fortunately he was right for this part and it was a great opportunity to work with him and he accepted. And he did a great job.”
Larry David probably won’t be coming out of his trailer for small talk.
In a clip shot during the show’s first day of filming this year, Smoove (otherwise known as Leon Black) can be seen pounding on David’s trailer door, trying to get him to come out and say hello. Unsurprisingly, David does not.
The show will be shot in Los Angeles this time around.
Despite spending most of show’s last season in New York, and one hilarious scene in Paris, the crew is returning to its L.A. roots.
“There were very big crowds watching us film in New York as opposed to L.A., where you can’t get one person to stop,” David told The Huffington Post on filming season No. 8. “In New York, they’re very vocal and really tend to be enthusiastic. And in L.A…. nobody really cares, because they see so much of it.”
“Gilmore Girls” star Lauren Graham will have a multi-episode arc.
Hailing from the opposite end of the spectrum of TV with cult followings, Lauren Graham of “Gilmore Girls” will be a recurring character in Season 9. The actress confirmed the news on Twitter, with a post that read: “Pret-ty, pet-ty, good. RIGHT?”
How will the queen of pop tarts do with the man who stared sample-abusers in the face and lived to tell the tale? We’ll find out soon.
Larry David is still “an old white man.”
Co-star J.B. Smoove told Complex that he tried to introduce his boss to the lingua franca of liberal inclusiveness, but David was not easily changed. On ‘woke-ness’ (aware of social issues, particularly involving racial injustice, if you aren’t woke enough to know) Smoove said: “Sometimes he takes it too literally and tries to correct you as opposed to listening and being woke himself…He’s not woke.”
Speaking of not being “woke,” a new storyline will “stir up a little bit of a hornet’s nest.”
“Um, it will definitely cause people to ask me questions,” Mary Steenburgen told Entertainment Weekly. “There are aspects of it that are a little challenging for me. And I think for Ted [Danson], too. But it will be interesting. It will be really interesting.”
Irate women using “interesting” as a euphemism for an David’s offensive antics? This, more than anything, truly signifies the return of Curb.
Everybody involved is really excited.
From David’s daughter Cazzie to Richard Lewis, buzz is starting to grow on social media about the new season.
Off the road. Gearing up for Curb Season 9! I will never lose a fight again with LD or I will be his butler for life. pic.twitter.com/VhsTCZAliF
— Richard Lewis (@TheRichardLewis) October 10, 2016
To get back into playing her volatile character, Susie Essman channeled all her anger towards Donald Trump.
“That’s the only positive thing that’s come out of this election is that there’s a certain male that I can use to fuel my anger,” Essman told The Daily News about getting back into character. “I have other techniques that I call on, but I’m stuck with that one.”
All of Larry David’s recent high-profile appearances may have provided fodder for the upcoming season.
“What’s interesting is, the more stuff he does, the fact that he’d been doing all the SNL and doing the Broadway show [“Fish in the Dark,”] it creates new situations where he gets ideas,” David Mandel, who was the executive producer of “Curb,” told The Hollywood Reporter. “So my guess is, I’m sure he just kept filling that notebook, which is a good thing for everybody.”
The theme song has reached new vistas of relevance.
The “Curb” theme song has been revived as musical accompaniment to a new genre of internet videos depicting high-profile human error. The song has greatly improved clips including Warren Beaty’s infamous Oscar gaffe, Steve Harvey accidentally crowning the wrong woman at the 2015 Miss Universe Pageant, and Ben Carson wandering onstage at a GOP debate. An entire website, Curb Your Video, is devoted to underscoring videos with the theme song to make things “pretty…pretty…awkward.”
Luciano Michelini, the writer of “Frolic,” said he has watched many of these videos and finds them “amusing”.
And a bonus: David Steinberg, who has directed many episodes of Curb including several in the upcoming season, will be the Executive Producer of another show that is returning this year after a long hiatus: Cash Cab. Will Cash Cab, Gilmore Girls, and Curb have a three-way crossover episode? Stranger things have happened. Many of them written by Larry David.
Thea Glassman is an associate editor at the Forward. Contact her at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter, @theakglassman.
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