Ted Danson portrayed himself on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm for more than two decades. But it wasn’t until close to the end of the show’s run that he realized he was playing a jerk.
On Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote his new Netflix series A Man on the Inside, Danson recalled a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm in which he overheard Larry David calling him a “real a-----e.”
“I was like, wait, what?” Danson said, explaining that he never read the parts of the script outlines—or watch the show, apparently. When he asked another co-star, Jeff Garlin, about his character’s reputation within the world of the show, Garlin said, “Oh, you’re just the worst human being on the planet, Larry hates you!”
Seth Meyers attempted to defend his guest as one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, but Danson admitted, “I can be an a--hole around [Larry], he’s a dick.”
David also made Danson and his actual wife Mary Steenburgen get divorced on the show—even though they are very much still married in real life—so that Danson could start dating David’s fictional ex-wife Cheryl, played by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s wife Cheryl Hines.
“I’m an actor, I know I’m just pretending, but it didn’t feel that way,” Danson said, revealing the close friends actually thought they were divorced after watching the show. “Yeah, we decided to announce it on a sitcom,” he joked.
For more, listen to Seth Meyers talk about Donald Trump, JD Vance and his role as a political late-night comedian covering it all on The Last Laugh podcast.
