Larry David is celebrating America’s upcoming 250th birthday the most patriotic way he knows how — by spoofing many of the biggest moments in the country’s history.
With his new HBO series Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America, the comedian brings his signature commentary to historical events including the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Boston Tea Party, the Wright brothers’ invention of the airplane and World War I.
Coming two years after he wrapped the long-running Curb Your Enthusiasm, David told The Hollywood Reporter at the show’s L.A. premiere that the new series is “Curb-ish in a way. We shoot it like Curb, in that it’s improvised, and my characters are Curb-like, so it’s not that far afield,” along with tons of celebrity guest stars.
It came about when Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground were looking to do a show celebrating the USA turning 250 this year, and came to David looking to collaborate. He and Curb showrunner Jeff Schaffer quickly decided it should be a sketch show and “we didn’t do any research, just the things that we already knew about,” David — who was a history major in college — explained.
That included convincing Barack Obama himself to act in a sketch, which David said he pitched to the former President directly on the phone with a sketch idea and “he liked it.” Schaffer added, “The first meeting that Larry and I had with the President they were so funny together; my main mission was to get them on screen together as much as possible.”
Higher Ground exec Ethan Lewis, who serves as an EP on the series, also noted that Obama’s acting moment was “something that came up kind of organically, like right timing, right idea and it came together thankfully pretty seamlessly” after “a couple of meetings.”
The show’s skits span from the 1700s all the way up to modern times, as David emphasized, “If there was a good idea, then we would use it, regardless of when it happened.” That did not include David reprising his Saturday Night Live performance as Bernie Sanders, though, with Schaffer explaining that was “too SNL” to do on their show.
Inside the premiere screening — held at the Hollywood Legion Theater, which is fittingly a venue owned and operated by veterans — David told the crowd a story about how when he was 12, his family drove from Brooklyn to Miami for Christmas. He told his mother he wasn’t excited for the trip and “she said, ‘You never get excited about anything! What do you ever get excited about? Why can’t you be excited?’” However, he admitted, “I have to say, tonight I’m a little excited. Dare I say, enthusiastic.”
David also joked that everyone told him he would never do anything with a history major, and they were right — until now 55 years later, while also teasing Schaffer for not knowing “shit about history, [I] had to carry him through the whole shoot.”
In closing, he declared, “If you don’t like this, you don’t have to come up and tell me. That’s not going to do any good — I’m going to hate you for the rest of your life. Do what I do, just trash it behind my back. That’s what I would do. That’s the way to do it.”
Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness premieres Friday on HBO.
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