While Julia Louis-Dreyfus has had many amazing roles over her decades-long career, from playing the main character on Veep to starring in the sweet rom-com Enough Said, her time as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld is the most beloved. Elaine and Jerry were exes who were friends and everyone enjoyed watching them banter and bicker. Louis-Dreyfus never watched the Seinfeld pilot as she wasn't in it, and she's definitely part of the reason why the show is so good.
When she was only 21 years old, Julia Louis-Dreyfus was cast on Saturday Night Live, but she doesn't have the most positive things to say about that experience. Let's take a look at what she has said.
A Tough Atmosphere
Many people dream of starring on SNL and it can definitely be a very lucrative job. Some cast members are paid $25,000 for each episode.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus joined SNL in 1982 and according to People, she was interviewed by Stephen Colbert at an event in 2019 and shared that it wasn't the best time.
The actress said, "I was unbelievably naive and I didn’t really understand how the dynamics of the place worked. It was very sexist, very sexist,” she continued. People were doing crazy drugs at the time. I was oblivious. I just thought, ‘Oh wow. He’s got a lot of energy.'”
Of course, SNL is famous for being a place where many talented people have honed their craft, and Louis-Dreyfus explained it as a time in her life that was "brutal" but also "informative." The actress said the show made her realize that she has to enjoy the work that she's doing. She said, “I don’t have to walk and crawl through this kind of nasty glass if it’s not ultimately going to be fulfilling, and so that’s how I sort of moved forward from that moment. I sort of applied the fun-meter to every job since, and that has been very helpful.”
Her Early Comedy Days And Meeting Larry David
The New Yorker reported that Julia Louis-Dreyfus joined The Practical Theater Company, a comedy group, and she left Northwestern University after getting cast on SNL.
She explained that it wasn't a fun environment for her: she said, “It was a very dog-eat-dog environment,” she said. “I didn’t go in armed with a bag of characters from which to pluck. I came into it naïvely, with this notion that it would be ensemble work, and that writers would be trying to write for everyone. But it was very political and very male-centric. Very.”
Louis-Dreyfus shared with NPR that since she was in high school in the 1970s, she loved watching SNL and she thought it was such an incredible show. She loved acting when she went to Northwestern because it was all about teamwork and everyone would work on the sets together. She said that SNL was totally different and she felt "green" when she was hired. She also said, "It was a little bit heartbreaking, truthfully, particularly as a woman there. There were very few women, and they did definitely at that period of time got short shrift."
In an interview with Jess Cagle at a SiriusXM Town Hall, Julia Louis-Dreyfus shared that she became pals with Larry David at SNL. They both were unhappy and that allowed them to connect with one another.
The actress shared, "Larry was there my third year. He never got a sketch on the air. We sort of became friends because we identified with each other’s misery.”
It was because of her connection with Larry David that she was hired as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld. In the same New Yorker piece mentioned above, Louis-Dreyfus explained that she met with Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and Seinfeld was eating some cereal. She said, "he was very young and casual, in a way I thought was appealing."
Comedy Roles
In her cover interview with Time, Julia Louis-Dreyfus shared that she made sure that Elaine would get great storylines on Seinfeld. It was tough since the writers' room was made up of only men.
Louis-Dreyfus said she could tell that the industry was changing and that she was being given much interesting and meaningful roles. She told Time, “There’s more opportunity for women in comedic roles than 20 or 30 years ago. There’s more opportunity for roles that are not just the wife–the exasperated wife–or the girlfriend. The adoring, hot girlfriend.”
Fans love Julia Louis-Dreyfus because she is so incredibly talented and brings so much joy to her characters, and it's also nice that she's so honest about her time as part of the cast of Saturday Night Live.