After a preview of his reunion with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the season six premiere of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” at the Vulture Festival on Saturday, Jerry Seinfeld gave the audience a firsthand account of what it was like to be on the Late Show With David Letterman finale — including what it was like to be the butt of one of the night’s funniest jokes. (“Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.”) As he tells it, the writers were scared of giving Julia the joke, but they didn’t know that the only thing that matters to him is that it’s funny:
“I like all jokes. There’s really nothing else I care about except jokes, I don’t care who has them, whose feelings have to be hurt — if it’s a good joke I’m into it. And we actually fought hard for that particular joke; the writers had a different joke that Julia and I did not like and she came to me and she said, ‘I don’t know if this joke works,’ and I read the joke and I go, ‘No, that’s a bad joke.’ She had flown from L.A. to New York just to do the one line — we were really excited to be on that show. It was a really cool experience to be on Dave’s last show and I didn’t want her to go out there and tank. I’ve been at this awhile; you don’t always know 100 percent, but in this case I knew this is a loser, and so we went to the writers and it was quite a long negotiation and then they came up with this other line, which was sensational. I wonder actually now, I was thinking, Did they have that, or did they write that? Maybe they didn’t want to hurt my feelings. That’s what it may have been: that they had that joke and they didn’t want to hurt my feelings and then, of course, they don’t know I don’t have feelings.”
Watch the full interview below:
