Larry David Would Rather ‘Spend a Year in Prison’ Than Do Another ‘Torturous’ Season of ‘Seinfeld’

Blake J. Harris, author of Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, recently shared some revealing insights into Larry David’s experience creating and overseeing Seinfeld.

Speaking on The Daily Beast’s Obsessed podcast on Saturday, October 24, Harris said David, 79, told some associates that he would “rather spend a year in prison than do another season of Seinfeld.”

“Part of it is shtick or him being kind of funny, but part of it hints at how torturous it was for him to run Seinfeld,” the author explained.

“That torture largely came from the pressure he put on himself to come up with good ideas,” Harris continued, “which is a constant theme in the book.”

The biographer noted that David’s drive to make Seinfeld a success became a major source of stress for him over the years.

“To him, every second of every episode needed to hit a certain caliber of quality and trying to clear that bar – day after day after day – seemed unsustainable,” he added.  “Or put more succinctly, as one of Larry’s future Seinfeld colleagues would later tell The Hollywood Reporter, ‘[Larry’s] so consumed with perfection that doing episodes is as painful for him as passing kidney stones.’”

Harris said David read a draft of the biography and offered feedback.

“I think we’ve done too much of this – of me being anxious and worried about coming up with ideas,” David reportedly said.

“And I said, ‘No, we haven’t, because that’s all that anyone talks about… you were always saying this,’” Harris recalled.

David cocreated Seinfeld with Jerry Seinfeld and served as showrunner on the first seven seasons, and returned to cowrite the series’ 1998 finale in season 9.

In 2009, the Curb Your Enthusiasm star tapped the cast of Seinfeld — including Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards — for a fictional reunion in season 9 of the hit HBO series.