Levenara

When I look back on playing Elaine on Seinfeld,

Elaine Marie Benes, I don't really analyze the character or my

performance very much. I just think of how much fun we had doing it. The laughs that we had together. I mean if you watch any of the

blooper reels you're going to get a sense of it. Just how lucky I am to have been part of something like that.

Actually, there's a lot of luck in the story of even getting Seinfeld on the air

and of me getting to be in it.

See, they made a Seinfeld pilot before I was cast,

before there was even an Elaine character in the script.

It was called the Seinfeld Chronicles back then,

and the pilot famously tested very badly and NBC was going to just drop the whole

thing but Rick Ludwig a really sweet guy who was the head of specials and late night at NBC, talked the network into making four episodes using money from his specials budget.

But, NBC insisted that they add a regular female

character. I'm sure they said you know add a girl and that's why Jerry

Seinfeld and Larry David wrote the character of Elaine.

I had met Larry at Saturday Night Live and we bonded because he was miserable there.

And I was miserable there and I was miserable there and so we were happily miserable together.

We really did get along and we became good friends in New York.

So when they added a lane to these four scripts that they are writing, he sent two of them to me.

I think that, I think people forget how different television was back then.

The sitcom filmed in front of a live audience was the most popular thing going.

Most of the top 10 TV shows were sitcoms. I mean, they weren't all shitty though.

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