Ted Danson Didn’t Know His ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Character Would Be the ‘Worst Human Being on the Planet’

“My job was to be friction” on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ted Danson told Seth Meyers this week. But when he first took the job, he didn’t exactly understand the assignment.

On his first day of filming a scene, Danson’s assignment was to walk past Larry David and a famous actress as they chatted at the dry cleaners. He did the scene four or five times, screwing it up again and again as he wasn’t hitting his mark on time. That’s why he heard some dialogue his character wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Yeah, Danson. He’s a real ass(bleep).”

That stopped Danson in his track. “I was like, ‘Wait, what?’” he told Meyers. “Because I never read the scripts.” 

You’d think “reading the script” would be Acting 101, and so would Meyers. “I really like that you kept doing (Curb) without ever reading the scripts, that you always just found out on set what you were doing,” he laughed. “I think that shows your professionalism.”

Professional or not, David’s insult shook Danson so he went to Jeff Garlin to find out what was going on. “And he said, ‘You don’t know? Oh, you’re just — you’re the worst human being on the planet. You know, Larry hates you.”

The funny thing to Meyers? Danson is the least “friction” guy he knows. “I guess that’s Larry's comedy. ‘I’m going to make Ted an ass(bleep) because he would never be an ass(bleep).” 

“I can be an ass(bleep) around him,” Danson said. “He’s a dick.”

That made sense to Meyers. “Everybody can be an ass(bleep) around Larry,” he agreed. “He makes everybody a little bit of an ass(bleep).”

As proof of David’s ass(bleep) qualities, he made Danson and his wife Mary Steenbergen get divorced in the Curb universe. Larry even asked Mary out! “I’m an actor. I know I’m just pretending. I get that, but it didn’t feel that way,” Danson said. “I go to work and he says, ‘Oh, by the way, you’ve divorced Mary and you’re dating Cheryl.”

Danson had to go and tell his wife it was over — at least on Curb. “She’s an actor. She also understands. But it was so personal,” he said. “And people who we knew, who knew us well, would call after they saw the show and go, ‘Oh, my God!’”

People taking the show split seriously brought out the eye-roll from Steenbergen. “Right, right,” she’d say sarcastically. “We decided to announce it on a sitcom.” 

That blend of the real and maybe-it’s-real was one of the things that made Curb Your Enthusiasm so good, argued Meyers. 

But Danson quickly corrected the host: “It’s not that good.”