Due to numerous surgeries, Richard Lewis will not appear in Curb's upcoming season
Aux Features Comedians
The great Richard Lewis, stand-up comedian and one-time Boku pitchman, will not be around to antagonize (or be antagonized by) Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm’s upcoming 11th season. The actor confirmed as much in a tweet on Monday, noting that he’s “endured a back and two shoulder surgeries” over the last 18 months.
He elaborated in a statement to Variety: “For 20 years, I had the greatest comedy gig I could have ever imagined with my oldest and dearest friend LD. Honestly, I’m crushed that I won’t be part of this season. For sure, I will be screaming with all the other Curb fans when the new season starts. Hope to be there for Season 12!”
We do, too. Nobody can break David (or Larry) quite like Lewis. Still, it’ll be interesting to see how the show addresses his absence, especially in the post-COVID world in which it’s going to be set. “COVID definitely happened and we definitely talk about it…And Larry [the character] has opinions on all of it,” producer and writer Jeff Schaffer recently said of the new episodes. “I can’t tell you which characters got COVID, but I can definitely tell you that we do examine peoples’ behavior during the COVID era.” We will mourn the loss of Lewis’ particular brand of cynicism in an era when it is more than warranted.
A premiere date for the new season has yet to be announced.
70 Comments
Here’s to a speed recovery!
Damn. LOVE him on this show.
there are stories around Hollywood about jerks (donald sutherland, faye dunaway) and there are stories around Hollywood about nice people (martin sheen, ron howard)Richard Lewis is up in the “Ron Howard” category of nice people. Once I told him I was a fan of his work in line at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf and he stopped what he was doing to speak with me, which, frankly I was somewhat unprepared for 😀
I kind of feel like there are those in “the biz” (as Hollywood elites like to say) where an IRL asshole persona wouldn’t work to their advantage – like Richard Lewis or Ron Howard or Henry Winkler. I’d be shocked if I met Ron Howard and he was a total dick. I bet Ron Howard knows how to tell people to “fuck off” in a way that makes them feel warm and hugged.Bill Murray pretty much has no choice but to be nice to people at this point.
On the other hand, I’d be really surprised if I met someone like Matthew Broderick and he wasn’t a complete jerk. I’m pretty sure Richard Dreyfus just walks around begging to be punched in the face. William H. Macy seems like he could get confused and angry if confronted by a fan in an Orange County See’s Candy store.
Then there are the ones that I’m not sure about. Danny DeVito could probably go either way. Same with Ed Norton, Robert Downey Jr., and .
I just noticed that I only mentioned men, so to be inclusive:Gena Rowlands – niceGeena Davis – niceTea Leoni – meanMayim Beyalik – depends on the situation
Unless they are unable to control themselves, every person in the world makes a calculation about how much of a jerk they can be, or want to be, or need to be in their professional versus personal life or their public life versus their private life overall. Maybe Jerk Ron Howard runs a studio (and makes better movies), maybe he’s a janitor (and makes better movies). You can look at the capital-aspect of every social interaction and view every nice gesture through the lens of “networking” and go completely insane or you can believe that Richard Lewis is a nice dude (but does he WANT people to THINK OF HIM as nice…which definitely sounds like something Larry David has addressed, and also like Chris Rock’s bit about telling everybody he gave a homeless guy $5). I might also group this with my response in another thread where I noted that virtue signaling encourages other people to act virtuously (and that lack-of-virtue signaling is pretty much what people are doing by calling out virtue signaling).
Michael Bluth would definitely say he ran into Jerk Ron Howard.
Shouldn’t have been boinking his daughter, just sayin…
I don’t run into celebrities often*, but I’ve certainly known “regular” people who were masters of the elevator conversation, but were generally awful people if you had to deal with them much longer than that. These people tend to be highly successful.*I did meet Tony Bennett once and he was a prince.
this was more like Richard Lewis stopped what he was doing and gave me 100% attention, the opposite of an elevator pitch of turning on the charm he was just there and listening, his wife must love that 🙂
I’ve worked with him. Let’s just say he’s NO prince.
“I’ve certainly known “regular” people who were masters of the elevator conversation”My friend’s brother-in-law lived in the same building as Brian Dennehy, and apparently that guy was fucking awesome in 60-second doses.
I will vouch for Dustin Hoffman circa 1995
Unless you happen to be a woman he feels entitled to sexually harass and assault. https://www.businessinsider.com/women-who-have-accused-dustin-hoffman-of-sexual-misconduct-list-2017-12
Yuck. I take it back. Being a high school boy at the time, he was super courteous to me. I do remember there being allegations. I thought maybe the date I put was outside the range of his awfulness. I was wrong.
Ed Norton definitely seems like a guy you could catch on a bad day and regret it. I’m not gonna assume he is 100% jerk, but behind the scenes stories seem to indicate he is the “difficult artist” type.
I refuse to believe Danny DeVito is anything other than a lovely man.
Kind of weird when he asked me to sew him inside my couch but he was cool.
He just wanted to be pure…
Anyway, he just started blasting
I bet if you met DeVito in a bar he’d hang out with you and drink for a couple hours and then stiff you on the tab. Norton I bet is an assholeChances of seeing RDJ out in the wild are slim to none, when you are that big of a global superstar you just don’t go out in public. At least not without a disguise and then you don’t want to be seen.
By most accounts Danny Devito is a lovely person. Mara Wilson has spoken about Devito and his wife had nothing but support for her while her mother was going through cancer during the production of Matilda.
I wouldn’t otherwise tell this story, but considering the show this thread is about I will. My brother ran into Larry David at a coffee shop once. He had no intention of saying anything but made eye contact and smiled as if to say. “hey I think you’re a very funny dude.” Larry gave him a look like “Please don’t talk to me, I hate it when people do that.” Which actually was pretty on brand for him. Funny enough, several years later I was visiting LA and having lunch at a place in Santa Monica and Larry David sat down like 5 feet from our table. I made no eye contact, but he seemed like he was in good spirits with whoever he was lunching with.
When I lived in Los Angeles, I was amazed at how people were somehow trained to understand that by acknowledging a celebrity when you’re out somewhere is like wearing a sign that says “I’m a tourist.” It’s some kind of unspoken rule.
I guess I somehow picked up on that!
I was ona flight with William H. Macy. Good cat!
Mayim will totally baby-bird you though.
Harlan Ellison wrote an entire essay about what it’s like to be a well-known personality, and having “fans”.
His basic message was
“Be polite when approaching them. Don’t bother them if they are eating, or in a discussion with someone else, and above all, don’t call them at 3 AM , and act surprised when they answer the phone. Don’t dig through their garbage. Don’t get so obsessed that you feel that you have to kill them. And, if you are part of their circle of friends, don’t ALWAYS expect them to pick up the check at dinner.”
I’m a screenwriter. I had a meeting with Ron Howard literally while he was mixing the sound for “Apollo 13.” We discussed a rough idea for a story he was looking to turn into a screenplay (it never happened, with me or anybody else writing it), then we just shot the shit for a couple hours. We were in an office, looking in at the screen and the guys at the mixing board. They’d occasionally play Howard a clip, and he’d make suggestions. He is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in the film industry. He told me great stories about filming “Apollo 13.” He told me John Sayles did a major rewrite of the script, and Howard was angry that the WGA didn’t give him a screen credit. Also, Gary Sinise was disappointed he wasn’t in the zero-gravity part of the movie, and begged to be taken up one time while they filmed inside a jet that was going into nose-dives in order to make the actors float. Sinise ended up ruining a take because his vomit floated into view while they were filming. We even discussed “American Graffiti” for a while, with Howard laughing heartily while I talked about my favorite moments from the film. He gave this much attention to a screenwriter he had just met that afternoon. You’d have to work in the industry to recognize how rare that is. Most people, even if they’re low on the totem pole, will give a writer the bare minimum of their time, then shoo them out of the office. Courteously, maybe. But they’re still shooing you. I’ve only had one other experience with a big shot that was equally amiable, and that was a guy who produced “Young Frankenstein” 30 years earlier! He had more time on his hands than Ron Howard did, to be sure, but at least he was equally kind to me. (Howard doesn’t tell people to fuck off, by the way, because his partner Brian Grazer does that. And everybody realizes it. It’s a definite good cop/bad cop routine, and both roles come naturally to the guys playing them.)
“Tea Leoni – mean”It’s completely perv of me to want Tea Leoni to bully me. I’d probably be the creepiest Cameo she’s ever done.
Man does it bum me out to learn Donald Sutherland is a jerk, but of course Bartlett would be a good guy! <3
I’ve heard his barroom brawl stories, and even Mary Lynn Rajskub on this week’s CBB threw shade at Kiefer… shit were talking about the wrong Sutherland..damn it bums me out about Donald too. 🙁
Yeah… he doesn’t really have anyone running around complaining about him. Never has. I feel for him – age get’s us all and his surgeries were maybe not life threatening but still bad enough to put him out of action for the immediate future. Best wishes to him.
Addendum to previous comment:
Through a pure stroke of luck, I got to fly First Class on a flight to Newark years ago. Through an even rarer stroke of luck, I got to sit next to an honest-to-God actor from the Sopranos, Drea de Matteo (Ariana).
I made it an EXTREME point NOT to bother her during the entire flight. It was only during the long awkward time waiting to taxi to the gate that we talked about the show. (Note: James Gandolfini was “a big hippy”.) And that was my brush with celebrity. I think I comported myself well.
Oh that’s a relief, I was expecting to read that he was a total jerk for a second there.
Too Soon!!
He and the Funk Man were the best parts of Curb. It’ll be rough season without both, but I’ll try to manage.
They never actually killed off Funkhouser did they? Didn’t they say he was in china and replace him with his brother? I wonder if they’re going to have him be patient zero and have died of Covid? Or is that just totally in bad taste?
I mean, Bob Einstein ain’t coming back, so you think they have to do SOMETHING, right?
That would be so great if Albert Brooks popped up as Funkhouser’s brother for a season.
I read somewhere that Larry and the rest of the cast were still too in shock by his death to put it in the show. I’m hoping he gets a proper inappropriate sendoff in the next season. I also hope they have no plans of including Vince Vaughan’s character in the next season now that they have more time to write around Marty’s absence.
Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I think Vince Vaughn’s character has a lot of potential.
You seem to be on this website at least. I’ve liked some of his work in the past, but I did no care for him on Curb. I think it’s possible he could be better since they have more time to write episodes with his character in mind. Without Lewis there will definitely be more room for other characters.
To be clear, what they did with him amounted to a bunch of nothing. BUT, I thought the potential was there. Vaughn has a comic delivery that I think fits with LD’s vibe.
I’ll miss Funkhauser too – but they totally should replace him with his brother – i.e. his real life brother Albert Brooks (real name – Albert Einstein). That would be amazing.
when i first heard an actor from the show had died, i thought it was Lewis based on his appearance. sometimes i still forget.
Time to call in John Hamm as a full-timer. One can dream, anyway.
But there is Leon now! The was good without Funk Man. When S10 came out we started back at S1 for the first time in ages. I had forgotten that Funkhauser didn’t join the show until midway through. I definitely missed him in S10, and I agree it will be strange to not have Richard either. Regarding Leon, when he first joined the show I didn’t like his character for some reason. Over time he’s grown to be one of my favorite parts.
I’d been wondering about his gait and posture. I guess it’s because of these troubles. Hope the surgeries helped!
So, I don’t watch Curb. Is it still about The Making of Seinfeld, or did it move past that?
Daddy Dearest with Lewis and Rickles was hilarious. Unfortunately Rickles died the same year it debuted.
I can’t tell if you’re making a joke or not. Help me – is this a joke?
aww, he better be back for s12. he’s awesome.
I hope you’re right that there will be a season 12. Given the gaps between recent seasons, and the age of the key players, this is optimistic.
Not surprising. Throughout S10 his posture is so stiff and slow you can feel how hard it must be for him to move. Get well soon Lewis!
I wouldn’t have minded Larry visiting him in hospital and home settings after a back surgery and being perturbed doing it, but it’s kind of impossible at the same time since I know back and shoulder pain.
I’m making my way through S10 right now (it’s not exactly bingeable — a little Larry David goes a long way), and I thought that it was his way of expressing his exasperation with Larry’s antics — that he’s so exhausted by the man that it manifests physically. It makes me sad to see that he was likely working through real pain.
I never thought about that…just assumed he was getting old!
Well the two things can be one in the same.
I noticed. He looked so much older, they started giving him girlfriends in their mid-30s.
What a schmohawk. (Also hope to see him make a speedy recovery.)
FAKE NEWS! The real reason is he ate too much of that Bavarian licorice from the BMW dealership…
It makes sense that he wouldn’t be a regular, under the circumstances, but… not even a Zoom or two?
I’ll of course miss Lewis, but we need more Leon, Susie, evil Ted Danson, and maybe Mickey? Just no more Vince Vaughn.
Agree on all points. From my understanding Vince was brought in because when Bob died it was too late to write his part out of the show. I thought Vaughan was awful. Season 10 did not have enough Susie meltdowns, we definitely need more of that the next time around. We absolutely need more Leon as well. I mentioned in another comment that I didn’t like his character when he first joined the show, but I warmed to him and he’s now one of the highlights for me. He steals just about every scene he’s in.
Legendary hypochondriac actually gets sick…or DOES HE
When Larry David is looking better than you, it might be time to consider your lifestyle.
Larry is a clean living guy, from what I’ve gathered. It’s not easy to look trim and spry at his age.
Lewis has that wispy thin blown about old hair that seems to suggest he drank from the wrong Grail.
I figured it was because the kidney he got from Larry finally got depressed and killed itself.