‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Boss Jeff Schaffer Reveals Episode 3 Bit That Prompted a Larry David Debate
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[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of season 12 of Curb Your Enthusiasm.]
In the world of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David is back in Los Angeles and he’s a bit famous.
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The third episode of the HBO comedy’s final season brought the so-called liberal darling back from Georgia, where he made national news for violating the Election Integrity Act when he got arrested for offering Leon’s (J.B. Smoove) aunt, Auntie Rae (Ellia English), a bottle of water while she was in a voting line. He has a trial looming — and is facing up to one year in prison and a fine of $10,000 — but he has the new perk of being praised by strangers, including actress Sienna Miller, who appeared to be flirting with the famous curmudgeon.
With Larry back in L.A., the ensemble was all gathered as Cheryl Hines, Ted Danson, Richard Lewis and Vince Vaughn reunited with David, Smoove, Jeff Garlin and Susie Essman for a new series of episode setups — several of which, executive producer Jeff Schaffer says, will play into the rest of the season.
Below in his weekly chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Schaffer shares behind-the-scenes details from the biggest threads from the episode, “Vertical Drop, Horizontal Tug” — including the storyline that prompted the biggest discussion with creator-star David in the edit room — and his response to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticizing last week’s MAGA storyline. In a separate chat, guest star Troy Kotsur also shares with THR a surprising connection in his guest casting.
Troy Kotsur Got the Last Laugh
Kotsur and his real-life interpreter, Justin Maurer, became targets of Larry’s on the golf course, when Larry first stole tips from the Oscar-winning CODA actor’s private lesson and then hit Kotsur in the back with a golf ball because Kotsur, playing himself, wouldn’t have been able to hear Larry yell “Fore.”
Kotsur, who had improv training as a theater actor at Deaf West Theater and National Theater of the Deaf, says he and Maurer generally knew the setup, but, as is the Curb way, their prep was an outline. “[Director Jeff Schaffer said], ‘Here’s where you’re going to confront Larry David with your interpreter.’ And when we did rehearsal, they said, ‘Don’t say anything, just wait until action.’ They really wanted to capture that raw emotion and surprise of the situation,” Kotsur tells THR in a chat with Maurer as his interpreter over Zoom. “After one of my takes, I saw Larry David drop character and he was laughing so hard after we cut. I felt pretty good about that.”
Kotsur acknowledges he is not the first deaf actor to guest star on Curb. In a very fun fact, his real-life wife, Deanne Bray, appeared in the season six 2007 episode titled “Ratdog,” which saw Bray, in character, also not getting along with Larry and seeing her dog suffer a terrible fate. “A lot of people don’t realize that we’re married. It’s pretty amazing that husband and wife were both able to be on Curb,” says Kotsur, who adds that he has actually been golfing since age 12. “My sweet revenge was throwing bagels at Larry David’s head. And, can you imagine, I was actually throwing bagels at Larry David’s face? (Laughs.) I think everyone in the Deaf community will be thrilled, just to see how I can handle working with Larry David.” He adds, “And it was Larry actually throwing the bagels, it wasn’t somebody else.”
In what could be perceived as a callback, the episode ends with the death of another dog (this time, by coyote, not by an exterminator). Despite the husband-wife connection, Schaffer says Kotsur’s casting was not some “12-year diabolical scheme,” but that Kotsur was perfect because he loves golf, he’s funny and he loves the show. “It seems like we got Deanne one year and now were going to hire her husband just so they could watch another dog die. I literally never made that connection until now,” Schaffer says with a laugh.
The Curb boss does share, however, that the plotline of Jeff (Jeff Garlin) thinking his dog was being eaten by a coyote and continuing to play golf does have Hollywood roots.
“It’s a real story from a Hollywood heavy-hitter, who shall remain nameless,” says Schaffer, making clear it’s not David. “A Hollywood heavy-hitter was playing golf, heard his dog being attacked by a coyote, realized there was nothing he could do about it and he continued to play. Names will be withheld to protect the guilty.”
“The Scrotum Tactic”
One continuous plotline in the episode stems from Leon (J.B. Smoove) and his loose shorts, which cause his testicles to hang out during several conversations. When Larry’s neighbor, Dwayne Tubman (played by Matthew Jones), tries to push Larry into splitting the cost for a lemon tree that hangs over his property, Leon is the only one who can convince the neighbor to drop the request after Tubman gets a glimpse of Leon in the shorts. Larry ends up using the tactic on Mr. Takahashi (Dana Lee) in order to keep his membership at his golf club after hitting Kotsur and snooping on his private lessons.
“Larry and I used to joke about testicles, and we would joke about what a ramshackled design they are. Ergonomically, they’re problematic,” explains Schaffer about the inspiration for the storyline. “The irony that this organ that is supposed to procreate life is so abhorrent that any life with an ounce of sense would run away from it, we always thought was funny and we really liked using it as a way to move the story along. Once Tubman caught a glimpse of Leon’s leathery nether, he got all discombobulated. We used to joke that in World War II if Chamberlain has just used the scrotum tactic, Hitler would have gone like, ‘All right, I’m good, I’m not gonna invade. I’m out!’ We wanted to explore the power of the balls.”
The challenge, says Schaffer, was figuring out how to balloon Smoove’s gym shorts so they didn’t cling to his legs, and instead created the appearance of being able to be peered into. Schaffer says this prompted one of the season’s biggest edit discussions between him and David, about how much viewers should be able to see into the “cave” of his shorts. “Larry wanted to make sure it was scrotal monster in your mind. I thought, if you can see into the blackness but you can’t see through the blackness, that was OK. But he was like, ‘No, if you should be able to see it and you don’t see it, we’ve failed. It’s got to be the testicle in your mind.'”
“Un-Tubman Like”
Larry’s neighbor Dwayne Tubman (Jones) is a relative of civil rights icon Harriet Tubman, which is a fact that Larry holds on to after the lemon tree request. “There are a lot of Harriet Tubman jokes in this episode. We went for it. And I will say, it gave us some brilliant lines,” says Schaffer. “Vince [Vaughn], who is such a brilliant improviser and we’re so lucky to have him in a big chunk of episodes, is talking about how Tubman strong-armed Larry into paying for the lemon tree, and says, ‘You know what the cruel irony of this is? You’re getting railroaded.’ That was 100 percent Vince, 100 percent genius.”
He adds, “That was also Larry’s improvisational beauty, that Harriet Tubman would smuggle slaves from south to north and not charge them, as opposed to her ancestor who is trying to charge him for a lemon tree. We thought it was very funny for Larry to say things like, ‘That’s un-Tubman like.’ It’s just a silly thing to get into an argument over lemons. Matthew Jones, who played Dwayne Tubman, was excellent.”
Revisiting the MAGA of It All
Curb prompted a response from then-President Donald Trump when a season 10 episode, which aired in 2020, featured Larry wearing a MAGA hat around Los Angeles as a people repellent. Last week’s episode centered around Larry and Jeff struggling to find a replacement Black lawn jockey (who ends up resembling Rudy Giuliani) after they broke the one from their Atlanta Airbnb. They knock on doors in Georgia and one person who does have the offensive lawn statue is wearing a MAGA hat.
This plotline prompted a lengthy response on X from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who said, in part, that the episode was “a glaring reminder of why most Georgian’s resent Republicans in our state for inviting the nasty commies from California, the Hollywood elites, into our state by dishing out Hollywood tax credits.”
Schaffer offers this response: “Was thrilled that Marjorie Taylor Greene did not like it. Very excited that that festering, bottle blonde, pustule dangling off the backside of the House of Representatives was unhappy with it. I love that she called us commies when she’s denying aid to Ukraine. That would be the height of irony or cynicism, if she knew what those words meant. I guess all I can really say is, I wish we could show her our collective scrotum and make her go away.”
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Maurer definitely did not pass along Larry’s Postmates apology offer to Kotsur. “We thought it would be super funny for Larry to have a very long, heartfelt apology culminating in a delightful gift of a Postmates dinner and having Justin just make the tiniest symbol and Larry going, ‘I know you didn’t say everything I just said.’ Justin has all the power,” confirms Schaffer.
Lewis, who was dealing with his Parkinson’s diagnosis while they were filming season 12 and “was a champ,” is “doing fantastic right now, I’m very happy to report,” says Schaffer. “Having seen him for press and everything, he’s doing amazing.” This episode saw Lewis and David going at it over topics like each other’s wills and their aging sperm, and Schaffer laughs while sharing that the “sperm fight” was completely improvised in the moment. “Larry is a particular kind of energized when he’s in a scene with Lewis. They’ve known each other forever, they’re old friends. And Larry delights in pressing Lewis’ buttons. And Lewis delights in fighting with Larry,” he says. “Them arguing about who has more sperm and then Leon shutting it down because ‘nobody wants it in powdered milk form.’ (Laughs.) There are a lot of things we put in people’s heads in this episode that hopefully they won’t be able to unsee for a long time.”
David is a huge Wordle fan, along with most of the cast and crew. “Spoiling someone’s Wordle is the new ruining the big twist at the end of the movie,” says Schaffer. “And who better to ruin Wordle to start with than Irma [played by Tracey Ullman]. Poor Larry. He comes back from Atlanta, he’s got this newfangled popularity, he’s beloved by the left. Even Sienna Miller seems interested. And he’s just got this Irma albatross hanging around his neck. He’s got this 10-week life sentence and he’s gonna see it through.”
Schaffer highlights this episode as a tour de force from Smoove: “From ‘vulva being a safe car’ to Jewish people having a song, and Larry having to correct him with, ‘It’s Hey Jude,’ to the amazing, ‘My sperm’s so strong, my baby’s going to come out with a mustache and bad credit,’ this episode has some all-time great Leon lines.”
Is David’s IQ really 152? “Larry’s mantra is: The truth beats a lie, unless you have a really good lie. If he has a really good lie, he’s going to go with it,” says Schaffer.
David recently shared his tactics for getting out of taking selfies and having to hear unsolicited pitches from fans for Curb storylines. For Schaffer, that very much tracks: “Alec [Berg] and Dave [Mandel] and I used to joke that the reason that Curb has outlines instead of scripts is so [Larry] doesn’t have to read any spec scripts. (Laughing.) So no one could bother him with, ‘I’ve got a great Curb spec.'”
Curb Your Enthusiasm releases new episodes Sundays at 10:30 p.m. on HBO and Max.
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