Seinfeld's Worst Rated Episode Featured A Guest-Starring Role From The Actor That Was Supposed To Pl
Looking back, there are so many little details Seinfeld fans don't know about. The show was a massive hit, but at the start, several changes were made.
In the following, we're going to take a closer look at the casting process, and how the likes of Jason Alexander and Julia-Louis Dreyfus landed on Seinfeld.
We're also going to take a closer look at the show's worst episode from season 1, and the guest-star that it featured. As it turns out, the guest from the episode almost played the iconic role of George Costanza. We'll reveal the actor, while also taking a closer look at the episode in question.
Jason Alexander Decided To Mimic Woody Allen During His Seinfeld Audition For George
It is hard to imagine anyone else but Jason Alexander in the role of George Costanza in Seinfeld. However, heading into the audition, Alexander revealed alongside Howard Stern that he was given minimal direction as to how to play the role. Knowing very little, Alexander decided to do some improv, basing his audition around Woody Allen.
“All I had was a couple of pages of the script, which read like a Woody Allen film. I had no context for it, so hence, I did the glasses and I did, you know, a blatant, as blatant a Woody Allen as I could do.”
However, once he landed the role, Alexander would find out exactly who he was really playing. Speaking alongside Larry David about a certain line, he'd uncover the motivation behind the character.
“Well, we ran into an early episode where nothing made sense to me; the situation seemed ludicrous… I wish I could remember the episode because it was in the first eight, nine, ten of them but I remember we did the table read and I went to Larry [David] and said, ‘Larry, please help me. This would never happen to anybody. But if it did, no one on the planet would react like this’.”
Alexander continues, “And he said, ‘Oh, what are you talking about? This happened to me, that’s exactly what I did!’ And I went, ‘Oh!’ and then the bells went off. I’m like, ‘Oh, oh, okay’ and then I just started really observing him and trying to pull as much of him into me as I could.”
And as they say, the rest is history.
Kevin Dunn Appeared In Seinfeld's Worst-Rated Episode, Male Unbonding During Season 1
According to IMDb, Seinfeld's worst-rated episode aired way back in June of 1990 during season one, episode four. The episode Male Unbonding was rated 7.3 on 10, which really isn't all that bad, but not comparable to some of the top of the series. In the episode, Jerry uses excuses to avoid an encounter with an old friend, given that they have no common interests. That person turned out to be Kevin Dunn.
The storyline was completely fine and it was another example as to why Seinfeld would thrive, given that it always seemed as though the cast was thrust in real-life situations that actually took place. This was yet another example of that.
Dunn was fine in the role but in truth, he could've done even more on the series. Dunn had initially auditioned for the role of George on the series. Obviously, he didn't get the role, but things could've looked very different with Dunn in Alexander's spot.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus Was Added To The Seinfeld At The Last Minute Because Of The Network's Request
Once the show got its start, the network deemed that it needed a female character. This made way for Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Although the audition was a huge one looking back, the actress felt at ease given that she was reading alongside Larry David, a person she was familiar with.
"I did it in the most relaxed of ways. I knew Larry because Larry had been on SNL when I was in my third year. We got to know each other there, and we became friends and we were both equally miserable [there], so we bonded over that," the actress tell Bustle.
"And then when I moved back to LA a few years after the fact, I got a call from my agent saying, "These four scripts have come in written by Larry David. I think you know him." So they sent me these scripts and they were, I'm telling you, wildly different than any television that was on then."
Still, Dreyfus did feel the pressure, particularly internally.
"No, I didn't feel exterior pressure. I always felt interior pressure, if that makes sense, not because she was a woman, necessarily. The thing that was great about that show in its best iteration was that it was neutral from a gender point of view. It wasn't like the girl jokes and the boy jokes. You know what I mean?"
Ultimately, it all worked out and the role of Elaine become iconic in television history.
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