Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Elaine Benes on Seinfeld is a special character in part because she doesn’t specifically stand out as special on the show. Of the sitcom’s four protagonists, she is the only woman, but she is just as selfish, mean, depraved, egotistical and funny as the men. It’s an important part of the show’s legacy – but it wasn’t always the case, and there is a story behind how things changed behind the scenes.
Writer Larry Charles, who was a writer on the first five seasons of Seinfeld, has a new memoir titled Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter, and during a recent promotional interview with CBS Mornings (via Instagram), he told the story of how the sitcom’s writer’s room changed their approach to stories for Elaine. It started when Julia Louis-Dreyfus stood up for herself and made it known that she wasn’t happy with the material she was being given:
Julia came into the office one day crying because we were not writing for her; we weren’t really giving her great stuff. And it’s like, ‘Well, how do you fix that?’ And Larry had the idea: ‘Let’s take this George story and just give it to Elaine and see what happens.’ And that exploded Elaine, because we’d never written women before, honestly. And so now, we had a way to write a woman that was kind of like the guys. She was as dark, as untrustworthy, as vain as the guys were, and that made her fun – fun to write for and expanded her character.
greatest sitcoms of all time, Seinfeld shines thanks to the genderless madness of Elaine Benes. Should you care to enjoy her many, many ridiculous antics alongside her friends Jerry, George and Kramer, the show is available to stream instantly to Netflix subscribers, and physical media collectors would be wise to pick up the show’s 4K UHD box set.