Jason Alexander Reveals His Favorite George Moment on ‘Seinfeld’
Jason Alexander was recently on the U.K. show The Project to promote his new partnership with Uber Eats, but honestly, who wants to talk about that? Instead, host Waleed Aly quickly turned the discussion to Seinfeld. “What’s your favorite Costanza moment?” isn’t the world’s most original question, but he got an interesting answer nonetheless.
At first, Alexander circled the question. “George got hoisted on his own petard so many times, and had to dig himself out of a hole, or not dig himself out of a hole,” he said. (I’ll save you a minute — Hoist your own petard: An expression that means to be harmed by your own plans or to fall into your own trap.)
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Then Alexander named his most memorable George moment. “The one that I remember so clearly is because I thought it was so brilliant,” explained Alexander, “was in an episode where George was working at the publishing company and he was having sexual relationships in his office with the cleaning woman and he got caught.”
Why Season Three’s “The Red Dot” in particular? “If you’re writing that scene, and you’re going, ‘Okay, I’ve got this guy George Costanza, what happens next?’ — whatever you would imagine, it wouldn’t be what they came up with.”
Alexander then repeated George’s response when confronted by his superiors over his office escapades: “Is that wrong?”
Alexander said the writers who created that perfect Costanza response to the awkward situation gave him incredible insight into George's mind. “That is the most brilliant, ‘try to save your own behind’ that I could have ever imagined,” he said. “When I first saw that script and I saw that was the approach they found, that was a big insight into who that character was for me. It was really very helpful for me in understanding how the mind of George Costanza works.”
The reason Alexander appreciated the insight was because George was a departure from most “best friend” sitcom characters that came before him. “Jerry (Seinfeld) and Larry (David) were writing a kind of comedy that was very new,” Alexander explained. “It had a different shape, it had a different sound, it had a different music. It was focused on different kinds of stories and different kinds of characters. Back then, it was very risky and off-the-beaten path.”
As for Uber Eats?
Alexander’s new ad is actually pretty funny, with the actor ordering canned laughs when his dinner party jokes fail to go over. That opens the door for a number of awkward scenarios in which inappropriate laughter haunts the actor’s good intentions.
George Costanza would understand.
