Larry David is ultimately the man responsible for hiring Michael Richards to play Cosmo Kramer in Seinfeld. He had met Michael while working on ABC's sketch comedy show Fridays in the early 1980s. Ever since he was trying to find the right character for Michale to play in one of his sitcoms. Larry, alongside his Seinfeld co-creator Jerry, eventually came to the realization that Michael would be ideal for the role of Kramer... and boy were they ever right. However, it actually took almost the entire first season for Larry to become completely comfortable with Micheal's take on the character.
Fans of Seinfeld ad HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm know that Larry's comedy comes from a deeply personal place. In fact, basically, everything comes from his own experiences. For example, one of the best episodes of Seinfeld was based on his terrible experience at SNL and the character of George Costanza was based on Larry himself. The same is true for Kramer. But when Michael Richards took the part, he did something completely different and this itnially didn't sit well with Larry.
Michael Richard's Interpretation Of Kramer Was Different Than What Larry David Had Written
"The character of Kramer was based on my neighbor, Kenny Kramer," Larry said in a behind-the-scenes documentary on the creation of Cosmo Kramer. "My neighbor was a guy who would come in and take a lot of my food. And he was a guy who didn't work really. Or, if he did, nobody really knew what he did. But what I knew was that he was in that apartment 22 out of 24 hours of the day."
While Cosmo Kramer was based on the very-real Kenny Kramer, Michael Richards did not spend any time basing the character off the reason person. He had his own take on the character and that take was that he played the character "real slow", always behind everything that was going on. On top of this, he wanted to present the character as though he had very little contact with people. Fortunately for Larry and Jerry, this was precisely how the character was written. But Michael decided to add some different flavors to the role that Larry wasn't so sure of at first.
"Michael, of course, brought his own personality into the part and he created a character that really wasn't -- that evolved over years. It certainly wasn't what was originally intended," Larry said.
"[Larry] wasn't quite sure where I was going with this character," Michael Richards said of creator Larry David's opinion of his work. "It didn't quite fit in with how he saw Kramer, who we know was Kenny and his experiences there with him in New York. I took it [motioning to way off-side]."
While Larry admits to really not being sure of what Michael was doing with the Kramer character at first, he also said that he "wasn't going to look a gift-horse in the mouth". Larry hired Michael because of how much he loved his work on the show Fridays. He knew Michael was special and he didn't want to get in the way of the potential magic that he was bringing to Seinfeld. But that doesn't mean it wasn't hard for him to see his creation be twisted into something that it wasn't originally intended to be.
Writer Matt Goldman claimed that he remembers that Larry David was initially "concerned" with the direction Michael was taking his character. But Michael quickly showed Larry and the rest of the cast and crew that he totally had this character down in a way that would cause people to fall in love with him.
"In one of the very first episodes, I remember Michael Richards turning to exist and hitting the door jam and shaking the whole set, and everybody falling down laughing and that was the beginning of Kramer," Matt Goldman said. "And I remember Larry David being concerned that Kramer was becoming too big and too crazy."
On top of this, Michael's interpretation of the character made things more calling for the writers who didn't quite know how to write for him. What he was doing was so specific that it was hard to capture in words.
When Larry David Fell In Love With Michael Richard's Version Of Kramer
While Michael Richards was doing something extremely different from what Larry had written, this was an instance where the actor showed the writers how to develop and where to take the character instead of the other way around. However, Michael didn't remain stagnant in his interpretation of the character. He too let Kramer evolve. In the beginning, he was playing the character a little slower and dumber than everyone else but then he figured out the key to Kramer was that he thought everyone else was slower and dumber than he was. Fortunately, this revelation helped the writers, including and especially Larry David, know how to write for him.
Specifically, it was the episode called "The Statue" where Michael really figured out the character for the writers. In the sixth episode of season 2, Kramer went undercover to play a cop.
"The thing with Kramer is that I think you can put that guy in any situation, any predicament and it would work," Michael said.
On top of Michael's physical interpretation of the character and his general philosophy, he was constantly finding new voices, new strange pieces of clothing, and constantly doing different kinds of performances while filming. By this stage, Larry David knew that he made the right decision in letting Michael figure out the character for himself.
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