Larry David on the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm

The Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm is coming back to Showmax this week for its 12th and final season, with five episodes available from 15 March 2024 and new episodes on Fridays.  

Seinfeld co-creator Larry David stars as an over-the-top version of himself in the iconic HBO comedy, which continues to prove how seemingly trivial details of day-to-day life can precipitate catastrophic chains of events. 

“As Curb comes to an end, I will now have the opportunity to finally shed this ‘Larry David’ persona and become the person God intended me to be – the thoughtful, kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed by portraying this malignant character,” says Larry. “And so ‘Larry David,’ I bid you farewell. Your misanthropy will not be missed. And for those of you who would like to get in touch with me, you can reach me at Doctors Without Borders.”

Curb Your Enthusiasm also stars Jeff Garlin (The Goldbergs), Susie Essman (Broad City), Cheryl Hines (Suburgatory), J.B. Smoove (Mapleworth Murders), Richard Lewis (Anything But Love), Ted Danson (The Good Place), Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers), and Tracey Ullman (Tracey Ullman’s Show). This season’s cameos include South African Sharlto Copley (District 9), Jimmy Kimmel, Bruce Springsteen, Sienna Miller, and Dan Levy. 

We caught up with Larry to find out more about the final season, which currently has a 95% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is in IMDb’s 20 Most Popular TV Shows globally, with an 8.8/10 rating after 12 seasons that puts it at #61 on their all-time Top-Rated TV list. 

Did you ever imagine when you did the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm that it would last anything like this long?

After the show got picked up for a season, my agent said to me, “Hey, you can do ten seasons of this.” I said, “Are you out of your mind? Ten seasons?! Are you crazy??” And now here we are, twelve seasons later.

At what point did you decide that this was going to be the last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

I can’t remember. I think before we wrote it, I knew it was going to be the last one. We’ve been at it a long time. I’m getting old, as is the cast, and nature has a way of telling us to stop.

But you’ve changed your mind before. Like at the end of Season Five when you died and went to heaven…

Yeah, I’m always afraid I can’t write another one. So, I did think it was the last one, but this time it IS the last one.

No one can ever accuse you of avoiding the big issues of our time, and you have a scene involving a trans character in one episode, for example. Do you think you can get away with almost anything because the tone of the show is so playful?

It’s just a question of how you handle stuff. When you see something funny, you forget how you’re supposed to think.

You famously write an outline for each episode and the dialogue is then improvised. Are there specific lines in the script you write or is it really all improvised on the day?

Well, there’ll be lines in the outline that we come up with that we like and that we feel we should say at some point. But to tell you the truth, a lot of times I’ll be in make-up and I don’t even know what we’re shooting. And so I’ll say to somebody, “Can I read an outline? What are we doing?” And that’s as much thought as I put into it. It just makes it more spontaneous and more fun to try and make it up on the spot. But in every scene, we have to move the story along, too. So there are a lot of points that have to be addressed. And the cast is really good at moving the story along.

There are many hilarious scenes at the golf club this season. Are you actually any good at golf?

No, I’m very mediocre, as I am at most things. And I’m not being modest. It’s too hard. And it’s bad for a marriage.

There are some scenes with Richard Lewis this season that get even deeper into that friendship than ever… did it feel that way to you?

In Season Eleven when we were at the political rally, arguing about something idiotic, and Tracey Ullman was sitting behind us and I said [to Richard], “When are you going to die?” I mean, there’s nobody else in the world I could have said that to. It just came out in the scene. And because we’re so close and we’ve known each other so long, it’s just the kind of friendship where you can say anything and not have to worry that you’re going to hurt the person’s feelings. So, we get to do things like that, and it just makes the show better. And you can see how tight we are during our scenes, right? We have that friendship rhythm.

Do you have a favourite guest star?

Well, Tracey [Ullman] was pretty great. But I don’t like to do a list like that just in case I make other people feel bad. See, I’m a sensitive guy!

How does Tracey Ullman feel about being the embodiment of Larry’s absolute physical disgust?

I think she loves it.  She embraces it.Working with her has been one of the highlights of the series, for me.

When you wrote that character, did you have her in mind?

I didn’t. But after it was done, I remembered that she played Betty Friedan in this television show [Mrs. America]. And I remember thinking that yeah, that’s kind of what this character should be like…

Was it emotional for you when you filmed the final scene?

No. It was for a lot of people. But not for me. There’s something obviously wrong with me.

Do you know what you’re going to do next?

I really don’t know what I’m going to do, honestly. I have an office and it can’t just go to waste. When I was in college and people asked me what I was going to do when I got out, I said, “Something will turn up.” That’s how I feel now.

“Prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good.”

Larry David’s favourite episodes include:

• S8: Ep 3: Palestinian Chicken
• S2: Ep 7: The Doll
• S5: Ep 8: The Ski Lift
• S10: Ep 7: The Ugly Section
• S8: Ep 9: Mister Softee