E-mail a friendSusie Essman
airdate November 5, 2009
Stand-up comedy veteran and comic actress Susie Essman has worked clubs throughout the U.S. for more than two decades. She's appeared in her own HBO special, landed several gigs on Comedy Central, acted in numerous films and hosted Bravo's reality-competition series Better Half. She's also co-starred for all seven seasons in HBO's acclaimed series, Curb Your Enthusiasm—as a character Slate named one of the best on TV. With the newly-released What Would Susie Say?, the New York native adds author to her list of accomplishments.
Comedic actress describes fan reaction to her Curb Your Enthusiasm character. (1:41)
Full Interview (10:32)
Susie Essman
Tavis: Susie Essman is a talented comedian and actress who stars on the popular HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." She is also the author now of a new book, "What Would Susie Say," which offers thoughts about wisdom, love, life, and comedy.
Before we get to the text, here now first a scene from "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
[Clip]
Tavis: I got to give a lot of credit to my staff, how they found a clip that long of you not cussing Larry out.
Susie Essman: I was thinking that as I was watching it, Tavis. (Laughter)
Tavis: I was sitting there waiting for the bleeps to start popping up.
Essman: I have a few scenes. There are a few choice scenes. Later on in the episode I curse him out. So I try to pace myself. I seriously do, I try to not be this level all the time. I want to build to it.
Tavis: So what is up with you cussing people out all the time?
Essman: I only do it to Larry and Jeff; I don't do it in my real life. (Laughter) I don't do it to my husband and kids. Every now and then I'll get really, really angry at some customer service on the phone, press one, and I start screaming at an automated message machine. But I think everybody does that.
Tavis: I read somewhere that people who love your character walk up to you sometimes and ask you to cuss them out.
Essman: Sometimes? How about daily? Daily.
Tavis: Daily. What do they say, "Just cuss me out?"
Essman: Yeah, yeah. They'll give me specifics. Like if they're fat they'll say call me a fat (unintelligible). (Laughter) Yeah, they enjoy it.
Tavis: How weird is that?
Essman: It is so bizarre that this is what my life has become, because people who know me in my real life, not that I'm mild-mannered, necessarily, but I'm not Susie Greene. And it's so bizarre that - and yet poignant and wonderful that I've become beloved for yelling and screaming and telling people where to shove it.
Tavis: I think it's a great life, that you can actually - some people do that without - most of us do that without being asked, but how cool is it to have people walk up to you and say, "Please curse me out."
Essman: But you know what happens is - I mean, I'm not always in the mood. I'm shopping, buying produce or something, and somebody comes over to me and they ask, and it's like that's my work. Do I come to your dental office and ask you to just drill for free? (Laughter)
So I'm not always in the mood and I'll say to people, "Oh, no, I'd rather not," and then they start pushing me.
Tavis: Then you cuss them out for real.
Essman: Then I get really angry. (Laughter)
Tavis: Then you start cussing them out for real.
Essman: Yeah, exactly.
Tavis: Wow, that's funny. To your point about people wanting you to go into your acting shtick when they see you on the street, how much of that specifically for you do you think happens because on this show you guys all go by, the main characters go by your real first names?
Essman: Yeah, it's very confusing.
Tavis: Larry, Susie, yeah.
Essman: Well, I'm Susie, not Essman, but Greene; Larry David is Larry David, and then there's a lot of guest stars of people like Ted Danson, who plays Ted Danson, but it's not really Ted - it's really Ted Danson playing Ted Danson but he's playing the character of Ted Danson on "Curb."
Remember like on the Lucy show William Holden would show up? He wasn't really playing himself, William Holden. He was playing the actor William Holden. So there's a - and also because the show was improvised, so the lines feel so natural on "Curb."
So there's always that kind of weird - people don't know who anybody is. But I guarantee you that none of us are who you think we are.
Tavis: I'm always amazed when I get books from persons who have established themselves who choose to, for whatever reason, to be so open about some of their own trials, tribulations, travails, and you're no different.
Why, for you, the choice to be so open about some of the obstacles and challenges you've had in your own life?
Essman: A few reasons. The number one reason was I got married last year, and I have -
Tavis: For the first time.
Essman: For the first time.
Tavis: At age?
Essman: Fifty-three.
Tavis: Wow, first time.
Essman: Fifty-three, and -
Tavis: There's hope, there's hope.
Essman: Yeah, there's hope for everybody. (Laughter) And I have four teenage stepchildren. Well, they're not all teenagers now; now they're 16, 18, 20, and 21. When I met them you were 10 to 15. When they met me I was already successful, I was already on "Curb," and I wanted them to understand what it takes to be successful in life, how much dedication and work. I see them go through their normal teen angst and depressions and anxieties, and I wanted them to know that there is another life beyond that.
I went through deep, deep depression - just clinical suicidal depression that I came out the other end, which stand-up was the thing that really saved my life, and I wanted them to understand that aspect of me.
So that was one reason why I wrote it. The other is that just in general I think it's inspirational for - people see you as successful on television; they just think that was it, that was your whole life. That's not how it works. Things take a really long time; they take a lot of hard work.
Tavis: When you say stand-up saved your life, it begs a follow-up. Explain.
Essman: Well, it was when I started doing stand up that I found my voice, that I found the thing that was missing in my life. For me it was a creative voice that I had to find that I hadn't been doing, that I hadn't been actualizing. When I started doing stand-up, stand-up is such a powerful thing anyway, and making people laugh is like nothing else in the whole world, and it brought me out of myself.
It took me - one of the things about depression is that you're so wrapped up in yourself that you can't see through it. Once I began focusing on other people in an audience, I began to pay attention to other things and focus on something else other than myself, and it took me out of it.
Tavis: What do you make of the fact that there are everyday people, though, who buy books from people like us, getting our wisdom about life and love? What do you think of that?
Essman: Well, that's why there's - I say BS wisdom, because I felt somewhat pretentious. Yet in re-reading the book there are things that I think having lived - I'm 54 years old, I've been through a life, I was single for many years, struggling for many years, been through psychoanalysis, been through a lot, having these children that I'm a stepmother - full-time, hands-on stepmother to, so I think I know a thing or two.
At the same time, I don't want to be so presumptuous that I know anything, because like Plato said, I talk about that in the very beginning - "This I know - that I know nothing." Then Socrates also said, "Know thyself." So there's kind of like you know yourself and you know nothing at the same time.
Tavis: (Laughs) To your point of a moment ago about psychoanalysis, there are people, obviously, as you know, who embrace that and there are others who have a problem with that. Tell me how you became open to that.
Essman: Well, I was extremely unhappy and I wasn't always open to it, and this was before antidepressants. There were antidepressants, but very strong in those days. It wasn't Prozac or Celexa or whatever there is - Zoloft. I was extremely unhappy and I wanted to find an answer to my unhappiness.
For me, because I have an analytic mind - I'm a comedian, we take everything apart and twist it around in all different ways - I kind of took to it like a fish to water. But it's not for everybody.
To me, what psychoanalysis was was the more I could strip away of my unconscious, the more I understand myself, the freer I would become, and that actually did happen.
There were no light bulb moments; I didn't discover that I was molested when I was 10. There was nothing like that. It was just becoming more familiar with my unconscious so that it didn't have a hold on me. It wasn't controlling me in the same way that it used to.
Tavis: There's so much in this book, and I can't do justice to all of it. I want to go back, though, to your point that we ran past really fast about getting married at 53. What are your sharings about that for those who have not found - I was at a restaurant the other night, a great restaurant here in town, and one of my favorite songs came on from Bonnie Raitt, the "Nick of Time" song. Do you know the song "Nick of Time?"
Essman: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tavis: "I found love just in the nick of time?"
Essman: "In the nick of time."
Tavis: I thought about that when you said you got married at 53. Tell me your story.
Essman: Well, it so easily couldn't have happened. I met my husband - his brother was one of my best friends. I had never - I'd been friends with his brother for, like, 12 years or something. I love in Manhattan, he lives in upstate New York, we happened to be in the same place at the same time, we weren't fixed up, and both our lives are completely different because of it. That was six years ago.
My grandmother says this old Yiddish proverb - you make plans, and God laughs. I think that that's the key to life in a certain way, is you can't plan for these things. All you could do is be open to them.
I met him and he really sucked on paper. (Laughter) He wasn't the guy - he did. He was not the guy that when I - that you write down when you're a single woman. I think that's a mistake a lot of single women make. They have he's got to be this and this and this, and (makes noise). Jimmy lived 150 miles away and he was between careers at the time so he wasn't making a lot of money, he had four kids. It was like that didn't look so good to me.
Tavis: So you would not have found him on Match.com.
Essman: I would not have found - but you know what? He's like the warmest, loving, most open person I've ever met and I feel totally and completely safe and loved with him.
Tavis: Wow. I just think it's cool that in all of this that we've discussed, you find humor and comedy that makes the rest of us laugh. (Laughter) That's the cool part - you find comedy in all of this.
Essman: That's my religion.
Tavis: (Laughs) And her book is, "What Would Susie Say?" It's wisdom about love, life and comedy. Of course, we all know Susie from "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Susie, nice to have you on.
Essman: Thank you, Tavis, I love your show.
Tavis: It's my - I love having you on. It's my pleasure to have you here.
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