Red’s Celebrity Interviews: Susie Essman

Susie Essman, who plays Susie Greene on the hit TV comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm, learned fast about stepchildren when she married a man with four children, ages ten through 15.  “My mother used to tell me ‘you can’t buy your kids’ love,’” she writes in her recently released memoir What Would Susie Say?  Bullsh*t Wisdom About Love Life and Comedy (Simon & Schuster $25, 2009).

“You can, and it’s exponential. They’re like Russian mail-order brides–the more you spend, the more they love you.” This type of humor typifies the book, which though often funny, is poignant too.  And Essman, when she’s not filming or doing stand-up, lives in a ranch style home in Albany, New York where her husband works, came across as thoughtful and wise when she chatted with Red about family, comedy and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

So I guess you’re saying you can buy love, right?

I’m telling you, the spending thing worked.  They’re superficial and so am I. It’s perfect.  But really, it’s a joke and it really wasn’t calculated to buy their affection.  It’s just that I like to shop and so do they and so it’s something we do. As long as my money doesn’t run out, we’ll be friends.

Tell us about your book.

Thank you for asking. It’s really like a compilation of essays about things in my life, some funny but some serious like when I talk about my father’s death.  There’s scoop on Curb Your Enthusiasm and one chapter where I talk about “Weather Porn” which is about how my husband is obsessed with the weather channel.

Is writing a book like writing your stand-up routines?

I don’t write stand-up.  And writing the book was both fun and also just brutal.  I also feel it’s sort of like childbirth in that I don’t remember writing it which is what women say about having children.  But facing that blank page every morning is so difficult.

Do a lot of people wonder if you’re like Susie Greene, the foul mouthed character you play on Curb Your Enthusiasm who kicked Larry David out of her house because he didn’t want a tour of the place?

None of us is exactly like our characters. As an actress I like to play something extreme and Susie Greene is very extreme.  But people have the hardest time with me because they think I’m Susie Greene.  It’s a thing I do called acting and though I love Susie Greene and I love playing Susie Greene, but I’m not her.

Were you allowed to develop Susie Greene as you wanted or was it all planned from the start of the series?

I had no idea whatsoever as to my character when I started the show.  There were no scripts, no budget, there wasn’t a contract.  It was kind of like I have a barn, let’s do a show like an old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney movie.

Susie Essman always wanted to be a performer from the time she climbed on the kitchen table at age 10 and did improvisational commercials with canned goods to entertain her older brother’s stoned friends.  Four years ago, Essman, a New York based stand-up comedian, married and moved upstate to Albany, leaving behind a hip single life to be a wife and mother to four teenagers.  It’s a role she relishes but it hasn’t stopped her comedy routine or playing Susie Greene on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Do your stepchildren watch your comedy routines?

No, my act is edgier than Susie Greene and it’s not for kids.  But my oldest stepson, who is now 20 and in college, his friends have seen me and all of a sudden he invited me to visit because suddenly I’m cool.  Otherwise my work is nothing to them.  But I don’t think that’s unusual.  Probably Bruce Springsteen’s kids don’t think he’s cool either.

Tell us about working on Curb Your Enthusiasm.  It’s been on the air seven years now.  Are you surprised by its success?

Curb is the greatest thing I’ve ever done.  It’s amazing that it attracts such a wide range of followers.  This is just anecdotal, Jane, all these people of all ages approach me telling me they love the show.  25-year-old boys love us and we’re all old people on the show.  But it seems like everyone just loves that show.  Curb really takes social niceties and turns them on their head.  I’m hoping we’ll be back every year.  Though each year Larry doesn’t think he’ll be able to another year, that he won’t be able to be funny.  That’s because each season wrings him out but then he has a few months off and is ready to come back.

I hope the show comes back.

You?  I hope it does more than you.  I’m counting on that paycheck.

Reading your book, I’m surprised at how well thought out some of your insights are in raising stepchildren, beyond buying them everything. 

My real advice is to be really, really careful with stepchildren and don’t compete.  They’ll be gone soon enough and they should be first.  Don’t have an agenda with them.  I really have no agenda; I feel that our job is to protect them, set boundaries because kids in general really want boundaries even though they’re always testing them.  I also think the basis of any relationship in life is to see others clearly for who they are.

It sounds like that’s your next book, how to stepparent.

If I hadn’t become a comedian, I would have been a psychologist.

What do you do for fun?

I like to decorate, spend time with my family, Jimmy, my husband, and I like to get in the car and go someplace.  I really like to lie around reading a book with a bad TV show on in the background.

What do you like to read?

Lots of things–mysteries, non-fiction.

Like what?

I’m reading The God Delusion right now.  I’m trying to think of what else I just read . . .

Don’t worry, you’re doing better than Sarah Palin did when Katie Couric asked her the same question.

That’s a low bar.

For more on Susie Essman, visit www.susieessman.com

–Interview by Jane Ammeson, Red Editorial Staff
–Photo credit: Michael Cogliantry