Susie Essman

0:05Speaker 1:Hey everyone, this is Bruce Bosi. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Table for Two. This week, we're back at my favorite joy in La, the Sunset Tower for an incredible lunch.

0:18Speaker 2:Eric, are the Lost Tackles gluten free? Yes, and That's what I'm gonna have with no onion.

0:24Speaker 1:My guest today is one of the funniest people I know. She's a comedian, an actress, and a native New Yorker. You know her from her breakout role on Curb Your Enthusiasm, where her scenes with Larry David are legendary.

0:39Speaker 3:You know it's my real you know downfall is potato chips.

0:43Speaker 2:The worst you can just not a person that can have one potato chips.

0:51Speaker 1:That's right. We're having lunch today with my old friend Susy Esmond. We're going to talk about her life as a comedian, her time on Curb, and so much more so. Grab a rose and pull up a chair because this is going to be a fun one. I'm Bruce Bosi and this is my podcast Table for two.

1:19Speaker 4:Well, hey, everybody, if you've pulled up a chair today on Table for two, this is.

1:24Speaker 5:An amazing lunch for me because we are.

1:26Speaker 4:Having lunch with truly a thirty year friendship a person I met in nineteen ninety four and was reminded at an Oscar party.

1:37Speaker 2:That was also your birthday.

1:39Speaker 4:That was also my birthday, And like Susie, when we met, it was a connection from the immediately.

1:45Speaker 5:Start immediately, no joke, everybody, we are having fell in love with Susie Esmond. Welcome to the table. We did.

1:52Speaker 2:Yeah, we fell in love and that was it, you know, it was just it was just there. And at the time our life lives were completely different than our lives are now.

2:02Speaker 5:Oh no, we were.

2:04Speaker 2:I don't even know if you were working at the Palm then.

2:06Speaker 5:Oh I was.

2:07Speaker 4:I was doing the private events at the Palm two and the Palm one.

2:12Speaker 5:Oh my god, the Palm two closes, we all know.

2:13Speaker 4:And I took three pictures, Yes, I took three pictures, which I should have brought today.

2:18Speaker 5:I took your picture that you signed that was on the wall.

2:21Speaker 4:I took Irene Cara, and I took Sue Simmons.

2:25Speaker 2:Oh wow, Sue Simmons.

2:27Speaker 4:So you know those are the three a half I'm gonna send you, and you autographed it to my Gustin Luciano blah blah blah.

2:35Speaker 2:Hi, so you were you were doing that and I was a fledgling stand.

2:39Speaker 5:Yeah, tell me about that, like tell me about like.

2:41Speaker 2:I mean nineteen ninety were talking about nineteen ninety. So I started in nineteen eighty four basically doing stand up.

2:48Speaker 4:How did you get to that first? Because I was wondering about that, because I know, like you grew up in New York. What got you on the stage that first time in nineteen eighty four?

2:58Speaker 5:And where was it?

2:59Speaker 2:It was actually nineteen eighty three, the first time I got on stage. It was a place called Mostly Magic on Carmine Street in the village. It was a place and every Tuesday night they had an open mic, you know, and for people don't know what opened mic, you sign up and you get to do three minutes, five minutes whatever I was at the time I was. It was July nineteen eighty three. I was twenty eight years old. I was a lost, lost soul. I was depressed. I was working in a restaurant. I was in a very bad relationship, very bad relationship. I don't want to you know, abusive.

3:36Speaker 2:It kind of takes so many things, but it was. It was an emotionally bad relationship, and I just I didn't know what to do with my life. I was in a really, really bad stage. I was waitressing and all my friends. The way that I made waitressing bearable for myself is I would go back into the kitchen and imitate all the customers because I was always a great mimic, and all my waiter front. You know what it was like in the old days when you were young and you're working in a restaurant and then you all go out. You're out to three o'clock in the morning and it's fun, yeah, you know, and you got cash in your pocket at the end of the night.

4:09Speaker 2:To other things. I love about it the physical aspect. You're running, running, running, and you got to use your brain because you've got to prioritize and you have to you know. So it was it was diverting and interesting, and then you get really close with the people you're working with. I was a waiter at this place called Artie's Warehouse Restaurant on West twenty first Street between tenth and eleventh. It was an old warehouse.

4:30Speaker 5:Converting eleventh at that time.

4:32Speaker 2:Was it was not pretty, but you could park, so there was like a lot of bridge and tunnel types that came because you could park. And Artie was this old bomb Mitzvah band piano player, an accordion player, you know, who then had a million businesses. But he was always like playing the piano and tumbling and you know it was a great guy, great, great guy, and was very supportive of me when I started doing stand up.

4:56Speaker 3:He would let me leave early to go do sets, and he would let me he'd.

4:59Speaker 2:Let me quit because I couldn't take.

5:01Speaker 3:It anymore, and then hire me back but go on employment.

5:04Speaker 2:You know. He was very It was like a great guy. And I worked there for like seven years. And my friends there were the ones who said to me, you really need to do this. But I never thought of doing stand up. It was too scary and it wasn't.

5:17Speaker 5:Were you funny? Like in high school?

5:19Speaker 2:I was always funny, but I was not class clown funny. I was funny with my friends, you know, especially my girlfriends, because you know, when I was a teenager, you couldn't be funny in front of the boys.

5:28Speaker 5:Really, Oh yeah, it was or they were you know, he.

5:32Speaker 2:Couldn't You couldn't out funny them, right, sarcissists.

5:35Speaker 3:Yeah, there hetero guys.

5:40Speaker 2:But I had a great boyfriend in high school. But yeah, so they kind of forced me to get on stage and I did, and there were these two guys there, Paul Herzik and Bert Levitt. I thought I was going to do this once and never do it again. And at the time, I just did these characters. I didn't speak in my own voice. So I got on I did, you know, put the set together. And these guys came up to me afterwards and they said, we're opening up the comedy club. We thought you were great, We'd love you to work at our club. I gave them my phone number, never thinking anything. Never got back on stage again because I was petrified. Three or four months later, they called me, Hi, I remember us. We opened up this club and it was comedy You on thirteenth over and University over the Mexican restaurant over there, Yes, and they asked me to come down. They said, can you come down and do ten minutes? And I was I could curse on the show, right, you can, Okay? So I was a fucking idiot think in ten minutes, Oh, I could do that. Ten minutes is insane and sane.

6:36Speaker 6:Long.

6:36Speaker 2:So I wrote these character pieces and I went down there and I had all my friends come, Like afterwards, I would never have my friends come, but you know, it was a neophyte and these guys just kept on hiring me. Wow.

6:47Speaker 3:So for six months I only worked there.

6:50Speaker 5:Not back at the restaurant.

6:52Speaker 2:Well no, I still was working at the I mean, but no other comedy clubs. That's where I met Joy, and I met you know, so many other comedian friends. And and then after about like two months, I was like, Okay, this is what I was born to do.

7:04Speaker 3:But it was all kind of accidental. I didn't think I was going to do that.

7:08Speaker 4:But don't you think, like what I love about that story, Susie's We grew up at a time where things could be accidental. Yeah, you were living your life. We could be in our twenties and not know and be lost. I certainly was, you know, And like the accident leads to the next in which your closest friend for ever and ever and you meet. And it was a very special time in New York City.

7:28Speaker 2:But for comedy, it was a very special time, especially because in the mid eighties was when it was the comedy explosion, and you know, people would be lined every night at Catch a Rising Store. They'd be lined up around the corner on First Avenue, you know, I mean it was it was.

7:45Speaker 3:They called it the rock and Roll of the eighties.

7:47Speaker 2:It was huge, and every night a Catch a Rising Store there'd be rock stars and movies. It was like, if you recall, it was a dinky little club.

7:56Speaker 5:Yeah yeah, but there was another one too on front.

8:01Speaker 2:The comic strip was on second.

8:02Speaker 5:Second, that whole area, yeah, and then there.

8:05Speaker 2:Was the Improv which was on the west side. I'm forty fourth, which I never worked. You kind of aligned yourself with one club or another. But I didn't go to the uptown clubs for a while. I mean, I was too insecure. I was so deeply insecure, and it took me a really long time to you know, I was just doing the character thing to speak in my own voice and find I remember Ronnie Shakes, who died many many years ago, was great stand up comic, like a real jokester, old fashion, and I remember he said something to me like, oh, it takes you, you know, ten years or thirteen years to find your voice and stand up.

8:37Speaker 3:And I was Eric and I was like, Oh, it's not gonna take me that long.

8:39Speaker 2:It took me longer. You know, it takes you a really long time to find out who you are.

8:44Speaker 7:Yeah, when we met in ninety four, was a veteran, right you were.

9:01Speaker 5:Yeah, Yeah, you walked into the room and we have a visceral just.

9:04Speaker 4:I think connection as far as New Yorkers and just our niss together.

9:09Speaker 5:You just don't have that with everybody.

9:11Speaker 6:You were already.

9:12Speaker 2:I was an established comic at that point, and I was working. But you know, in stand up if you're not on TV, you're not drawing and making money, right really, So at the time, if you recall, there was a million of these stand up like you know, Bosy O'Donnell had stand up Spotlight, and there was evening at the Improv, and there was Caroline's Comedy Hour where you do five minutes and they pay you six hundred bucks and they own you for the rest of you know, perpetuity. But I was in a by that time. I was an established comic and just making a living as a comic, right, not a great living, but I paid my rent at a right.

9:55Speaker 5:I know exactly where you lived. You lived on seventy Eighth Street.

9:57Speaker 2:Right at a rent stabilized apartment.

9:59Speaker 4:Susan had a apartment that was so interesting because there's a rent stabilized apartment, but it also in a building in New York if you can picture the people.

10:07Speaker 5:But your front door was on this.

10:09Speaker 2:On the street. They call it a Masonite, don't they?

10:11Speaker 5:Is that what they call it?

10:12Speaker 2:And it was directly across the street from Stand Up New York. Yes, it was so when I used to work at Stand Up New York, you know in comedy and stand up they gave you the light when you got a few minutes left. They would call me when they gave the comic before me the light, and I would walk out of my apartment and just walk across the street.

10:27Speaker 5:Crazy. I always thought that was crazy that I lived there for fourteen years.

10:31Speaker 2:Yeah, and they they it was an illegal rent Statelis apartment. And then the super died, right, and the new super turned me in. One day, I got a knock on the door and it was the Marshall, the US.

10:43Speaker 5:Marshal, Yeah, staying out.

10:45Speaker 2:Yeah, well, he gave me thirty days and then I contacted a rent a you know, a rent lawyer or whatever, and that's when I bought my first apartment.

10:54Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean that's that's hys IDEA said, this is like.

10:59Speaker 2:But that was a ready two thousand and three, right, you know, so I had started doing curb, but not you know, I still had no money.

11:07Speaker 5:Yeah, it was broke all the time.

11:09Speaker 4:Now, but I also think that's what gives you, like the gravitas that you have, Like like that's what's kind of great it is like to have.

11:18Speaker 5:I mean, no one likes to be broke all the.

11:20Speaker 4:Time, but like living in New York, having that, doing the struggle being part of it.

11:25Speaker 5:Right, So when you had it, you had it, but you're still.

11:28Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I say broke, I was making a living, you know. But it was what we used to do at the time in stand up clubs is during the week they would play you what they call camp fair, which was some clubs was seven bucks, some clubs was ten bucks a set. Then on the weekends you would get fifty bucks a set, and if you were seeing like a cat, you'd get a hundred. So we used to do, you know, Maria, all of us we used to do. I used to do five, six seven sets on a Friday and a Saturday, wow, and then i'd have my rent right right, you know, so I had cash wow.

12:01Speaker 4:Yeah, And when you say five or sixcess, that's in the one run around.

12:06Speaker 2:And I don't know how we did that because we had no cell phones.

12:08Speaker 5:Right.

12:08Speaker 2:So then you do like a downtown run where I do the Duplex and Comedy Cellar and Green Street upstairs at Green Street on Saturday night. Then you come uptown I do Catch and Stand Up New York and the Comedy Cellar and I mean a comic strip and you know, so you kind of and then at the end of the night, wherever you ended up. For me, it was usually Catch. Then you go to the diner with everybody at three o'clock in the morning, I mean, and it was it was Joey and I were talking about this the other day. There was a tremendous sense of community and it was your cheers. Yeah, because I could walk into any comedy club in New York and I knew everybody, every comic hanging out at the bar, every waiter, waitress, doorman, and you didn't. And I was single, and I never had to think about what am I doing on a Saturday night working?

12:57Speaker 5:Right now, I have to get home to all my.

13:00Speaker 2:Friends were around me. All there was a great time, and it was a really creative time, really creative.

13:05Speaker 4:It's a really like you hit at a very special moment. The time period of nineteen eighties nineties what a great.

13:14Speaker 2:It was a great time. It was a great I mean, yeah, it was difficulties because I always had stage fright and you know, all this kind of crap and dealing with the business.

13:21Speaker 3:But it was also a frustrating time for me because I saw.

13:25Speaker 2:A lot of people that I knew, and I say this with all due modesty, who were not necessarily better than me, hitting on things and making real money. And that was frustrating tree not so much the fame as the finances, because I had no security and it got to the point where it was like, I don't know how much better I could be, and yet nothing was happening. Nothing was happening. So the mid nineties were kind of difficult for me, you know, limping along until I got that phone call in two thousand from Larry David, who had medica'rizing story.

14:00Speaker 6:Wow.

14:21Speaker 5:Thanks for joining us on Table for two.

14:23Speaker 1:Our guest Susie Esman played Susie Green on the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm for twelve seasons. She was absolutely hilarious on the show and stole many scenes with her creative and often explicit language. I know many listeners are probably curious about how she landed the role.

14:42Speaker 4:Okay, so now let's and I do know the story, but I think it's so worth telling, and it's so wild.

14:47Speaker 5:Susie So, and congratulations on what a run.

14:52Speaker 2:In twelve seasons, twenty four years.

14:54Speaker 5:Jesus Christ, that's just amazing. So Larry calls you.

14:57Speaker 2:You know him, Larry had done Seinfeld already. And I met Larry probably nineteen eighty five. You know, he was a stand up and I met him at the bar catch a rising star, and we always liked each other. And I remember once I was doing a new bit and he was in the room and another comic sets me, Oh, Larry came out and was talking about your bit was really good. And Larry was always that kind of a person that you wanted him to think well of your work because you knew he was a genius.

15:27Speaker 3:You know, there's just something about him that you knew he was otherworldly.

15:30Speaker 2:So I was I remember that, I was like, oh, Larry thought I was funny, you know, little did I know how many times I'd end up kicking him out of my house. So I met him then, and then he left because he went to moved to La to do Seinfelder all those years and became wildly successful financially and you know all that stuff.

15:49Speaker 3:And then one day, I don't remember it was nineteen ninety nine, oh.

15:52Speaker 2:Nineteen ninety nine, I did a roast for the Friars Club that was on Comedy Central of Jerry Stiller.

15:59Speaker 5:I remember that.

16:01Speaker 2:And this is another thing about that. It's you know, it's part of my mythology. I guess I had done a lot of stuff for the Friar's scope because my feeling was always in that period of time when I was frustrated that nothing major, you know, I had a part here apart there, I would do a lot of voiceovers for commercials and things. So I was making cobbling a living together, but nothing big was happening. And I remember that I was just kept feeling like, just keep showing up, just keep showing up, keep doing good work.

16:33Speaker 2:Focus on the work, don't focus on what anybody else is doing. You know that this one got this and that one had a development deal and you know whatever. So I made my bones with the Friar Scope. But you had to do because it was all those old stars, you know, yeah, Alan Kings and exactly. And they were not exactly you know, from the school that thought women were funny plus if you were halfway decent, and I was cute. In those days, they were very confused, used because they didn't know if they wanted to fuck you or laugh at you. You know, they were very confused.

17:07Speaker 2:And so but I went there and I made my bones with that. Yeah, so they knew I was good, right, stay in the room. And then they were doing the roast to Jerry Still, which was gonna be televised. And Jean Pierre Trebeau, who ran the Friars Club, that man, wonderful man.

17:26Speaker 5:Yeah, because we did the Palm, we did a bunch.

17:28Speaker 2:Of likes, was a relegant.

17:29Speaker 6:Wonderful man.

17:30Speaker 2:I mean he's still alive, I believe, but the Friars Club was no more. He pushed for me to be on that lineup and they didn't want me. Comedy Central didn't want me. I don't know why. Too old to female, to Jewish, who the fart knows, you know. But they pushed for me, and I think Comedy Central I had heard that. They thought, all right, fine, let her do it, you know, we'll cut her out, you know, And they paid. It was like five grand, which was a lot of money in those days because most of those sticks exactly.

17:59Speaker 2:So there was like, and well, you know, these roasts are really hard. You're in that Hilton Grand ballroom, high high ceilings, you're on a big dais. They're just really really hard. And I worked really hard on that roast and I wrote and it's not the way that I usually work. I'm not a setup punch jokey kind of comic, and that's what you have to be with a roast. You gotta punch it out.

18:23Speaker 3:You can't do mean during stories.

18:26Speaker 2:And it's not the way it works.

18:28Speaker 3:So I worked really hard and I had laryngitis.

18:30Speaker 2:I remember this. Danny Ielo was sitting next to me on the dais and Danny got bless him. I loved Danny.

18:37Speaker 3:I was like, Danny, I can't talk afland dress.

18:39Speaker 2:He wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't shut up, like I'm just like nodding. Luckily you could just talk.

18:47Speaker 6:He wasn't talk and.

18:48Speaker 2:I'm just and I would like open my mouth. Nothing was coming out on the diisdas and You're like, nothing was coming out. And I mean I had gone to the E n T. They gave me general I was like serious and part of it, I don't know if it was nerves, could have been nerves, could have been emotional. I killed. I killed. So Larry sees the roast and don't forget Jerry, you know, famously played George's father. So he watched the roast. He saw the roast and he called me up and I'll never forget the phone. I remember it like it was yesterday. Susie, Hey, it's l D.

19:35Speaker 2:I was like, oh, hi, for you in ten years. What do you want. I'm doing a show and I want to give you a part on the show. I said, all right, well what's the part. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about the part. I said, well, send me a script. There's no script and there's no money. You have to do it for scale and you're gonna have to fly yourself out. I was like, I'm fine doing it for scale, but I'm not gonna cost me money. They cobbled together some money. They flew me out of coat.

20:00Speaker 2:I stayed in some shithole in Venice, some like really flea bag hotel. And that was the first season I was making day scale and that was you know, we never thought that I would be here today telling this tale.

20:15Speaker 4:Did you ever think that Susie Green would become an icon?

20:20Speaker 5:Yeah, I mean, honestly.

20:23Speaker 2:I know, at some point that became clear to me.

20:26Speaker 6:It did.

20:27Speaker 2:Yeah, at some point, you know. Well, I mean, but many many at the time. Every season Larry would say, first of all, I had no contract. I was day player for many seasons.

20:37Speaker 5:Really that's not job security.

20:39Speaker 2:No job security. I think for the first seven seasons I was guest star day player. After a few seasons they paid me more money, but I still had no guarantee you know, I mean people who know, to the business, you want to guarantee all episodes, you know, all that stuff. So and when I say I was making more money, really nothing like we're thirty five hundred episode and I would do maybe five episodes, nothing that I could live on. But it did raise my profile so I could go out and make money doing stand up, which is what I was able to do. But every season we said that's it, we're not doing another one, and okay, so then he would come back the next season. I didn't know if I was on, I didn't know if he was going to come back, so there was no job security at all. Around season three, I started to notice anecdotally a lot of people stopping me on the street in New York. So it started to become a little more popular, and by season five he was using me a lot. And then I started to feel like he's not going to do this without me, and he didn't, honestly, and I love him so much. He's a good guy,

21:50Speaker 2:not just because he gave me a career. It's just he's one of the most loyal, generous people you could ever know.

21:58Speaker 5:Really, that's really beautiful thing to say.

22:01Speaker 4:You know, I have to you work with someone for a long time, especially in showbiz, as you know.

22:05Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's actually we're closer than ever really, Yes, we just keep you know. Part of it is the way that we work on Curb.

22:15Speaker 3:I'm not telling any anything new. We don't have a script.

22:18Speaker 2:It's all improvised, really amazing, it's fantastic. It's the greatest way. We have a very detailed outline because Larry's all story. But when you're working that way with somebody, you have to have tremendous amount of trust and respect. And we create together. You know, it's almost like I mean, I don't want to say it's like sex, because it's not, but we're we're making a baby.

22:43Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah, Each episode is like creating together.

22:48Speaker 2:So there's something very deep in our connection with one another, I think.

22:52Speaker 6:Yeah.

22:53Speaker 2:And as time went on, each season.

22:57Speaker 3:He used me more and more and more, and there.

23:00Speaker 2:Was a trust that developed that he got what I was doing and wrote more towards it, and I got what he wanted and gave more. You know, we just had a very very sympatico understanding of each other, and we we made each other laugh and we got each other's comedy.

23:19Speaker 5:So, hey, component does you should like?

23:23Speaker 4:What is the pressure to sort of understand the outline?

23:27Speaker 6:Now?

23:27Speaker 4:You know, you know, you know Larry, you're going to work that day, but you don't know what's going to happen.

23:33Speaker 5:Yeah, And that's right, it's is it is it just me?

23:37Speaker 2:Yeah? For me, it's the most fun because when you get a script, if it's well written, hopefully you know you memorize your lines and you figure out what you're doing, and it's a lot. It's fun if it's well written, and that's the key to everything.

23:53Speaker 3:The script is everything. Yeah, but what Laura Larry is so.

24:00Speaker 2:Oriented. I mean his genius is creating story and you could see it from all those Seinfeldts and all the curbs. So it's not we know what each scene needs. There's an outline with a paragraph that kind of lays out what each scene has to happen in each scene, So I always know what has to happen in the scene, and I know what my I put on my crazy outfits.

24:22Speaker 3:You know what the relationship is, Yeah.

24:24Speaker 2:I mean you know, but again that's something I created wardrobe designer too.

24:31Speaker 4:Of Susie Green's character's close change, I mean, like the whole like La woman like you.

24:40Speaker 2:Just the Beverly Hills housewife, Yeah, hysterical or Miami right, Oh, Miami right, kind of very similar. Not everybody reads the outlines, okay. For example, for many many seasons, he would not give guest stars the outlines. Oh really, because he didn't want them coming up with bad sitcom lines. Oh you know what I mean, They've been prepared coming into prepared. When you're doing improv, you got to listen. Look, you would not be so good at doing this podcast if you didn't know how to listen. Listening is the key, and as the older I get, the more I think it's the key to everything everything. So an improv you got to listen and respond. There will always be beats. At some point, I know I'm kicking them out of the house.

25:25Speaker 2:At some point I know I have to maybe give a specific line for story purposes.

25:30Speaker 3:But other than that, we're just playing. We're playing, and it's so much.

25:35Speaker 4:Fun right when So when you're when you're playing like that, it must be difficult. Then you do the scene and then I say, okay, well we got to redo the scene, so now how do you bring the fresh piece to the next scene.

25:52Speaker 2:Sometimes you do it differently. We do a lot of coverage because we have to because it's improvised, and that so much happens in the editing on this show what we do a lot of takes. Sometimes you do it differently, but you can't do it too differently because once we kind of set up our marks for where the camera's got to be, and we always have three cameras going huh. You can't change things around too much physically, but you know, it's like anything, how do you do scene after see?

26:19Speaker 2:How do you do Broadway? When you do the same fucking thing every night? Put a gun to my head for that one? You know, you somehow find a way to make it fresh. Now, I would always have to do my scenes over and over again because Larry would ruin all my takes giggling. It would just giggle.

26:35Speaker 4:I would be the same way.

26:45Speaker 5:Do you have a favorite?

26:47Speaker 4:It's like you know all your children, but like you have one particular episode or scene.

26:51Speaker 5:Or something that you've don There's so many, I mean, there really are.

26:55Speaker 2:There's so many. But probably my all time favorite is the Doll because that's from season two. Uh huh, And that's that really established Susie and her character, you know, and who doesn't love to scream? You get me the fucking head, you know what I mean. But you know, that's when the first time they played that spaghetti western music for me and I got a theme song, and that's when you first see Larry and Jeff really living in fear of Susie, which I enjoy, you know, So that's probably my favorite, and it's also it is an amazing episode. I mean, it's so well crafted, it's just a beautifully Larry's a genius. The way he crafts these episodes.

27:39Speaker 2:You can't I would read the outlines. Oh so that's what I was saying about the outline. So he never wanted anybody pre preparing lines. He would from the beginning he let me read the outlines because he would say I didn't pre prepare, and I didn't. But I would always read the outline the night before, the morning before I would go to set, because I wanted to know what the scene needed because more and more over the years, he's used me to drive a scene, so I always need to know.

28:07Speaker 3:All right, what happened before this, what's happening after this.

28:09Speaker 2:What do we need in this scene? And so I was always conscious of that without you know, coming up with bad sitcom lines.

28:18Speaker 5:Yeah, you know.

28:20Speaker 2:The only one who would come up with those lines ahead of time, Richard Lewis, just because you wanted to be prepared. Because he's a jokester. He was always coming up with lunes and Larry would always make fun of him for it.

28:34Speaker 4:When was the first time you said, like, fuck, you, Larry, and that became you realize, like, oh, that's a thing the way that you because you've always said fuck you that way, you know, you've been like you're in New.

28:44Speaker 2:Yorker, Yeah, fuck off, Yeah, I'm in New Yorker.

28:46Speaker 5:That all of a sudden became a signature.

28:49Speaker 2:I think I think that was the doll where I called him a four eyed fuck. The fat thock came in season one, right, and that was at Larry's instigation. Really, yeah, we're doing an episode called the Wire, which is what he hired me for. Was the reason he hired me because there's a fresh air Jeff brings a fresh air, fun kid into the house who robs us blind. And his direction to me was, it's the only time he's given me direction. I want you to you to rip Jeff a new asshole. And I was like, O capable of that, you know, So I'm screaming at him and cursing, and he kept on pulling me aside, and Larry Charles directed that he kept on pulling me aside and saying, go further. I was like, I thought I was going pretty far, you know, telling fuck you and you fucking asshole.

29:33Speaker 2:But and then Finally, Larry says to me, make fun of Jeff's fat and I was like, I don't want to do that because that was not my style of comedy to make fun of somebody's looks, you know. I just thought that was low. You know. He's like, just do it, just do it. He knows you're just acting. So it was the first time I called Jeff a fat fuck and that was it. The genie's out of the fucking bottle on that one. Baby.

29:57Speaker 4:Honestly, it really did become amazing to know when Larry and Jeff would see you coming into the house or coming home or whatever, they would use.

30:11Speaker 5:It to get busted.

30:13Speaker 2:You know. That's why people would say to me, how do you work up that anger? I'm not a method actress. I just, you know, I would put on the outfits and just become her. I have that ability to just become a character if I connect to them, and they would constantly provoke me. They get me, gets my kid drunk, he steals her dog, he gets us kicked out of the country club, he steals the salad dressing recipe, whatever it is. It's like I didn't have to think too far to get pissed off. Jeff is always cheating on me, you know, which is you know, not so believable, but whatever.

30:50Speaker 2:The Ralph and Norton is really really what they are, one scheme after another, and just like the Honeymooners, in that way, nobody learns a lesson.

30:59Speaker 3:And that was the last episode. No lessons learned. There was no le because in comedy you don't learn a lesson word.

31:25Speaker 5:Welcome back to table for two.

31:26Speaker 1:Susie is not only one of the funniest people in Hollywood, but also very thoughtful. We've known each other for over thirty years and have grown a lot over the decades. What has it been like raising a family and getting older?

31:40Speaker 5:You know, we were.

31:40Speaker 4:Talking a little bit earlier about I remember when you met Jimmy, your husband. You have raised children, you have grandchildren, like we both have grandparents.

31:50Speaker 5:We both have grandchildren. I know, Susie, what happened? We look good.

31:56Speaker 2:I like getting old. I'll tell you that why you don't get a shit on anymore?

32:00Speaker 5:Now you don't. You're free.

32:02Speaker 2:And besides the fact that I do wake up in the morning with a lot of aches that I didn't used to have. The only thing about getting old is the loss, you know, I mean, it's just gonna get worse. I've just experienced a lot of loss, and that's I mean, it's just the natural. It's how things go. I remember my mother lived into her nineties and all her friends were gone, all her contemporaries, all her relatives. She was and it's a little lonely when people don't share your memories.

32:33Speaker 4:You lose your witnesses, you lose I'm nervous. I see that a lot now with my generation, their parents, and.

32:41Speaker 5:I'm fortunate to have both my parents alive. But you don't know how you're going to feel until you Yeah, it happens, but it is something that.

32:48Speaker 2:The parents dying is the natural order of things. Yeah, my sister died last year, and it's like, who's going to remember Aunt Becky. It was my grandmother's sister, you know. I mean, I have a little sister, which she's ten years younger than me. There were so many things that I think about my sister to call her.

33:05Speaker 3:And there's nobody else that remembers these things.

33:09Speaker 2:So, yes, I have other friends, and you know, whatever, you move forward, and it's important to make young friends. But there's a there's a piece of your childhood that leaves you yes, and there's a morning that goes with that.

33:25Speaker 4:Did you find that when you? Like I found at some point in my early to mid fifties, I was just stuck in looking back, and I really it was like hard, like why did I make that decision?

33:37Speaker 5:And why did I do that?

33:39Speaker 4:Like the sort of the regret, the regret and the wisdom of twenty twenty the hindsight wisdom regret.

33:47Speaker 5:And I was like, you're gonna have to stop with this regret. Like I had to figure out how to pivot.

33:52Speaker 2:There's two sides to that. On the one hand, you have to be aware and conscious and if you make mistakes, you have to understand them and you know, learn from them. But the other side of that is it's useless. Yeah, you know, it's really it serves no purpose. Guilt. You know, conscience serves a purpose because otherwise we're sociopaths. But guilt, Listen, I'm fucking Jewish, believe me, my mother inundated that guilt.

34:20Speaker 3:I do not do that to my kids at all.

34:22Speaker 2:It was horrible. It serves no purpose to feel guilty, and the regret, I think you have to understand it and analyze it and feel what it's really about. But it eventually it bogs you down in a way that doesn't let you live a full life completely.

34:38Speaker 5:And it really does. And I really do feel too.

34:42Speaker 4:With age, I've never felt as good as I feel now.

34:46Speaker 2:Yeah.

34:46Speaker 6:I don't mean.

34:47Speaker 4:Physically, I just emotionally, emotionally knowing myself, having my voice, being able to be being.

34:54Speaker 2:Happy with yourself. And you know, you've raised a child, You've been in a successful lawng term relationship. Albeit there's always relationship issues, you know, Yeah, marriage just fucking hard. But you've accomplished those things. You've had a full career, Bruce. You worked all those years in the family business at the palm very successfully, but you've created this whole new career and for Saua. And how great is that Not at a young age you didn't start doing that. It's amazing.

35:24Speaker 5:Yeah, thank you, I mean it's amazing. Well, yeah, like the hustle.

35:27Speaker 4:And that was something a new thing that I had to discover, like how to hustle because I had even though I worked always super hard in my family's business, right, it was there, It was there have that I didn't have to develop that and you had that cushion.

35:41Speaker 5:I had that cushion.

35:42Speaker 4:I was now in that part of that regret period was if that hadn't been there, who would I have become?

35:47Speaker 2:Well? But then, you know, you could always think about that, but yeah, it's a waste of time because who you became is fabulous. Who would any of you know, it's a it's a game you could kind of play with your you know.

36:01Speaker 3:I mean, if I hadn't met Jimmy, where would I be now?

36:03Speaker 2:And who knows? Maybe I would be better, right, but I did. That's not how it worked out. I doubt i'd be better. By the way, Honey, if you're listening, you were the best thing that happened to me.

36:13Speaker 5:But I'll tell you this too. And I said it again.

36:16Speaker 4:I had the gift amazingly to be normally or asked me to be on his podcast years.

36:22Speaker 2:Ago, Norman, and I what a wonderful man he was.

36:25Speaker 4:Right, I didn't know normally everything every brilliant show. And I've met him a couple of times, so I was like, okay, And I was sitting there with a guy that was in the restaurant business, but he really homely but he really wanted to sit and talk to me.

36:37Speaker 5:Was being gay and being at the palm in this.

36:41Speaker 4:Bastion of header like what I did, So it was interested in that. But he said something that I thought was so fascinating. He goes, and everything I've done in my life him normally, has brought me to this moment to be with you right here, right now. Yeah, and he goes, and now it's gone, it's done, And I feel Barri's n.

37:01Speaker 5:Everything we've done.

37:03Speaker 2:Norman was a wise man. And Norman was somebody who was very much in the present, which is why I think he was able to be creative up until maybe not one hundred and one, but a hundred. You don't think the last year was a little iffy, but there's one hundred and one. But he was very present. And I and you know, I have some very old friends.

37:28Speaker 3:One of my dearest friends is Lee Grant.

37:30Speaker 2:Who's ninety eight, and I spoke to her yesterday and I observe how she lives, and she does not. She's very present. She's very much in the here and now and again has watched so many people and her contemporaries die and whatever, but was smart enough to befriend a youngster like me, and very much. I don't think that she suffers from a lot of regrets because there's not much she could do about it, and she's living in the moment.

38:05Speaker 4:That is truly the key for us to live in that moment and to be in the today. Because even like and when you when you, when you say it, and I feel it, you feel liberated, You're like free, You're just feel good.

38:19Speaker 2:And you know, we're healthy hopefully pooh pooh poo can hurrah. We live a long life. But we almost shit happens.

38:26Speaker 5:Shit, we don't know. We all know shit happened.

38:28Speaker 2:I never thought my sister was gonna drop dead, you know, just it's life throws your curveballs. It's it's a minefield that you're navigating. So if you're living in the past and your regrets, besides you do a little bit momentarily have to think about those things and learn from them, yes, you absolutely completely, but to but to obsess about them, right, there's no complete waste of life.

39:01Speaker 4:So looking forward or looking in the present, are you working on things now that?

39:05Speaker 2:Yeah? I actually after this, I have a meeting with with the some people about developing a new show. Yeah, I still want to work. I love to worry. I still I feel as though I've been given a gift to make people laugh. It's something that I'm happy that I'm able to do, and it's putting a good thing out in the world. I still want to make really happy.

39:24Speaker 4:The joy of having you sit at this table with me, and we have sat at tables before, and it has been time that has passed, and you one of the special things about our relationship and certain relationships you have in life, no matter how much time goes, it's nothing.

39:41Speaker 5:Looking into your eyes, I am full of so much love you have been given make me cry.

39:46Speaker 6:Well.

39:47Speaker 4:You've been given a gift which you have used, and you have worked hard to make that happen.

39:52Speaker 5:And like the admiration I have.

39:55Speaker 4:For you for those years of being a woman at a time when it was difficul to be in the business that was not locally the talent and now the world knows it and sees it. It's like I get such joy knowing felling yes about you.

40:12Speaker 2:So I'm in a good place in my life. I'm in a very good place in my life. Haven't always been, but you know, and It's an interesting thing because you know, I'm sure we're talking about this before. You know, I had rough upbringing, but all of that, whatever I went through, brought me to a place that all of those skills that I got because I had a mentally ill mother, and all of those things have worked.

40:39Speaker 6:Now.

40:44Speaker 2:Who doesn't like a nice berry?

40:47Speaker 4:Honestly, thank you so much, sir, berries and having some coffee and tea.

40:53Speaker 5:Jusey, I love you.

40:54Speaker 4:Thank you for joining me on Table for two, and everyone, have a great week.

40:57Speaker 5:See you next week.

41:06Speaker 1:Table for two with Bruce Bosi is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail. Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our supervising producer and editor is Dylan Fagan. Table for two is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers are Meel B. Klein, Jess Krainich, Evan Taylor, and Jesse Font. Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our talent booking is done by Jane Sarkin. Table for two's social media manager is Gracie Wiener. Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison Kanter Graber, Barbara Jen, Jeff Klein, and the staff at the Tower Bar in the world famous Sunset Tower Hotel in Hollywood. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.