The line that separates the real-life Larry David from the one we watched on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (available to stream anytime on HBO Now) was always a bit of a blur. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, a semi-retired comedy writer, and co-creator of Seinfeld, David’s largely improvised sitcom chronicled him living out his day-to-day life in Los Angeles, then, later, New York. While David has frequently addressed the issue himself, admitting he took a lot from his personal life, sprinkling it in the show, we decided to focus on some of the bigger real-life moments that made it into Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The entire premise of the pilot.
A typical audience reaction to Larry David’s stand-up routine in the early 1980s was described by his friend (and frequent Curb director) Robert Weide as “like carp looking up from a pond.” Never finding his stride in that arena, David would go on to co-create Seinfeld, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1998. The same year the finale aired, he’d made a decision to return to the stage to, as Weide assumed, “face down some old demons,” with HBO already in talks to document the event. At first the project centered on his stand-up routine with occasional sketches depicting a kind of fictionalized behind-the-scenes look, but these sketches eventually started to overtake the show and David’s stand-up bits started to exist solely for filler. They would be abandoned completely by the time the first season was underway.
Eating the nativity cookies.
This isn’t, directly, something that happened to David, but it’s too good to get bounced from this list on a technicality.
In many ways, “Mary, Joseph, and Larry” is a Christmas episode like only Curb Your Enthusiasm could do, with Cheryl’s family (featuring Kaitlin Olson from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as her sister, Becky) coming to spend the holiday with the Davids, leaving Larry to feel a bit left out. Unfortunately, the situation isn’t helped when, one night while looking for a snack, he inadvertently eats the cookies that they’d made specifically to decorate their nativity scene.
The idea for the episode started when Hines was visiting her family on Christmas and they were making cookies for their nativity scene. At some point, apparently, it was jokingly explained to Hines to “not eat the baby Jesus!” According to an interview she gave to TV Guide, Hines immediately called David and explained what was going on, knowing that if he were there, he’d be the one to inadvertently eat the cookie. Hines mentioned that there were people who did live nativity scenes, as well, something that David had “no idea” about, exhibiting the kind of blissful obliviousness that he felt toward Christmas that carried over into that episode.
Being best friends/former rivals with Richard Lewis.
Actor Richard Lewis, a notoriously neurotic comedian in his own right, played the sometimes friendly, often contentious friend of Larry David throughout the show’s run. It turns out, David and Lewis go all the way back to childhood — back when they hated each other. It turns out they would both attend the same sports camp when they were 12, and according to an interview Lewis gave OC Weekly, were bitter rivals. “The odds that we would become best friends was so unique and so crazy, it bonded us forever.”
That bond would form years later when they were both struggling comedians out in L.A. Once they’d become reacquainted, they soon recognized each other from that camp in their childhood. When casting the show, David went to Lewis’ house to ask him personally to co-star as his best friend in Curb Your Enthusiasm, believing their real-life history would be beneficial to his new show.
His on-screen marriage mirrored his real one.
When actress Cheryl Hines, who had a background in improv, first appeared as David’s TV wife, their rapport was so convincing that Hines’ friends and relatives would reach out to her wondering why she never told them that she had married a big-time TV producer. She hadn’t met David’s real-life wife, Laurie, until partway through filming the first season, so Hines never had a chance to base the character of Cheryl on her. Though after they did meet, David was against the idea of the two of them becoming friends after observing “…the wives, they’re getting closer and closer.”
Later, as David was going through an actual divorce with his wife, he didn’t feel right that his fictional character remain married, so it was all written into the show. While Hines understood David’s process, she still found herself upset over the loss of their on-screen marriage, even saying that “in another universe, I feel like I’m actually married to Larry and we exist as a couple. So, it’s very close to me, our relationship, our fictitious relationship.”
While rumors continue to circulate about David possibly resurrecting Curb Your Enthusiasm for a ninth season, it remains on hiatus, meaning we’ll have to wait and see if there’s anything left in store for these fictitious former spouses. In the meantime, we’ll always have his (real-life) daughter’s delightful Instagram account to tide us over.
Bonus: The show helped exonerate a man for murder.
As we’ve mentioned before, this is less life being used as art, and more art being used to save a man’s life. Specifically, the episode “The Carpool Lane,” where David picks up a prostitute specifically so he can use the carpool lane to attend a Dodgers game, which was filmed at a real match-up against the Atlanta Braves. The game was also attended by Juan Catalan and his young daughter, and shortly after, Catalan was accused of taking part in a drive-by shooting, which left one victim dead.
Even though he had the ticket stub from the game, he was sent to jail to await trial for murder. Thankfully, Catalan remembered that actor “Super” Dave Osborne had also been at the game filming some kind of TV show. Catalan’s attorney eventually got in touch with HBO who let him watch b-roll footage of the taping, and after 20 minutes or so, he found evidence that his client had been in attendance. David himself would say of the incident that he “liked to tell people that I’ve now done one good thing in my life, albeit inadvertently.”
