A Failed Sitcom Allowed Julia Louis-Dreyfus To Join Seinfeld
When it debuted, there truly was nothing else in the world quite like "Seinfeld." The "show about nothing" followed four New Yorkers as they struggled with forging their careers, finding love, and managing their various neuroses, and one of the things that really made it sing was the comedic chemistry between the four leads. While the show was ostensibly about comedian Jerry Seinfeld, playing a fictionalized version of himself à la the show's creator, Larry David, his friends Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), George Costanza (Jason Alexander), and Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) all bring their own unique comedic sensibilities, making it so much more.
Originally Elaine wasn't supposed to be one of the four leads, however, as the pilot that originally got picked up by NBC was going to mostly be about the three guys, with an occasional female fourth in the role of a waitress named Claire (Lee Garlington). In an interview for the Archive of American Television, Louis-Dreyfus revealed that she only ended up being a part of "Seinfeld" because another show she was going to be on didn't work out. The whole thing was serendipitous in the end, but she had to accept a tiny hit to her ego first.
Instead of starring in her own show, Louis-Dreyfus took a role on Seinfeld
In the interview, Louis-Dreyfus explained that after she finished starring on the two-season sitcom "Day by Day," she had a contract with Warner Bros. Television to develop her own series. Unfortunately, she didn't really like the scripts she was seeing for the show. Since she had a clause where she could back out if the writing wasn't up to par, she decided to go the other way, and the show never came to be. Then, she said, fate intervened:
"...about 48 hours later, no kidding, I was approached by Larry [David] that he had written these four scripts for this show and would I read them and et cetera et cetera. So I read these four scripts. They were phenomenal."
She notes that she didn't have much to do in two of the four episodes and it felt like a little bit of a let-down since she had just been about to star in her own series, but she liked the scripts and the energy when she met Seinfeld so much that she decided to do it anyway. She also notes that Warner Bros. allegedly sued her because they thought she had breached her contract by reading David's scripts and then quitting her own show, but that she stuck by how things happened and they let it go. It's a good thing, too, because Louis-Dreyfus was on her way to being one of television's biggest stars. "Seinfeld" was kind of a lightning-in-a-bottle success, and it couldn't have happened without Elaine.
Seinfeld without Elaine wouldn't be Seinfeld at all
Though Louis-Dreyfus didn't have much to do as Elaine in two of the episodes, she was still in them. In fact, Elaine was in every episode of "Seinfeld" save for the two-part season 4 premiere, which she had to sit out because of complications in pregnancy with her first child. Elaine is a vital part of what makes "Seinfeld" so stinking funny. Could you imagine the raunchy hilarity of "The Contest" without Elaine, for example? She's a fiercely funny female who holds her own with the guys, proving she can be just as lewd, crass, and terrible as Jerry, George, and Kramer.
The success of "Seinfeld" would fully launch Louis-Dreyfus's career and make her a household name. She's done a bit of everything, playing the hilariously inept Vice President Selina Meyer on "Veep" and even portraying a suspicious federal agent in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It would have been neat to see what Louis-Dreyfus could have done with her own comedy show back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, but things turned out alright in the end.