Perhaps one of the weirder story developments during Seinfeld‘s nine-season run was the decision to kill off George Costanza’s fiancée, Susan Ross, at the end of season seven due to licking toxic glue on cheap wedding invitations. Over the years, there have been rumors that the character was written out of the show because the cast didn’t like working with Heidi Swedberg, who played Susan.
While appearing on The Howard Stern Show Wednesday (June 3), Alexander was asked if those rumors were true and admitted that the chemistry between him and Swedberg was “a disaster.” Here is that part of their conversation:
“I love her. She’s a terrific girl. I love her. I couldn’t figure out how to play off of her,” Alexander said. “Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine, were always misfiring. And she would do something and I would go, okay, I see what she’s gonna do, I’m gonna adjust to her. And then I would adjust. And then it would change!”
Alexander went on to explain that no one realized the issue until Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus had to act with Swedberg. After that, according to Alexander, Louis-Dreyfus made a joke about killing her off, which inspired Larry David to write that exact storyline.
Hours after this became public and spread around the pop culture Internet, Alexander apparently realized that he came off as an asshole for telling the story on Stern’s show (even if it was entertaining and refreshingly candid) and apologized on Twitter.
Oh dear God, leave Heidi alone Read: http://t.co/14Q5akRj38
— jason alexander (@IJasonAlexander) June 4, 2015
“To Heidi, I personally apologize. You are a sweetheart,” Alexander wrote. “I actually launched into this on Stern to defend you. But this is why I’m not a lawyer. Now everybody, calm down and just enjoy the reruns and think, “why did he think this wasn’t working? This is great.”
Wow, if he was trying to defend Swedberg, how bad would it have been had he decided to rip her instead? Trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube never works well, does it?
[HitFix]
