The pinnacle of Jerry Seinfeld’s entire career: “The only time I ever felt electrified”
Not many people realise quite how much money Jerry Seinfeld has.
It isn’t that he is just rich, or that he has many, many valuable classic cars (which he does), it’s that his personal wealth is absolutely enormous. At a recent estimate, Jerry Seinfeld, the stand-up comedian and creator of 2007’s Bee Movie is worth $1.1billion.
Which is insane. It’s hard to work out how he has amassed this much money, but conventional wisdom says that it’s down to syndicating his eponymous 1980s/’90s sitcom, which is undeniably one of the most important in TV history.
The Brooklyn-born comedian was always fascinated by comedy, whether watching his father hoard jokes to put in his pocket for every occasion or watching the 1970s greats like Richard Pryor and Steve Martin – and after graduating from theatre college, he would try out the open mic nights around New York City.
His obvious ability led to spots on the late night network TV shows including The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Late Night with David Letterman, where his observational style and relatable quips about the annoyances of everyday life proved incredibly popular. It was in the early 1980s that he took his first steps into TV sitcoms with a small part in ABC’s Benson before he was unceremoniously fired without warning.
It may well be that it planted the sitcom seed, however, and he then spent several years honing his craft, doing stand-up to bigger and bigger crowds. He remembered one such special night of performing on the Johnny Carson show while in conversation with Canadian comedian and podcaster David Steinberg, recalling: “I remember every moment. May 6th, 1981. That was the only time I ever felt electrified. There’s nothing better for a comedian than being hemmed in, having been closed off, shut out, not welcome; that’s nutrition. That’s what you want as a comedian.”
The Tonight Show… was unquestionably the number one place to make or break comics at the time; a ratings juggernaut, it was watched religiously across the United States and ran for thirty years, helping to launch the careers of the likes of Jim Carrey and Ellen DeGeneres. Carson was known as a tough man to please, and one of the highest honours was when he enjoyed a stand-up set so much he would call the performer over afterwards to sit down for a chat.
Seinfeld added: “Acceptance is a dangerous thing for comedians. But that night was magic. Because the truth is, that kind of stand-up is the most intimate performance that there is. That relationship, when it’s locked in, is so intense, and rich, that all of the negative things about comedy that people say – how difficult it is, how humiliating it can be – I embrace all that. Because I think the ledger still tips in our favour. You get so much. And you’re also so much more in control of your life and your destiny and your art than anybody else is.”
Seinfeld took that newfound exposure and translated it first into a special on HBO and then into what was originally titled The Seinfeld Chronicles with fellow comic Larry David in 1988, a sitcom that would eventually run for nine seasons and become one of the most influential and most-watched in network history. So popular was it that the finale was seen by thousands packed into Times Square and Seinfeld himself turned down a rumoured $110million to do a tenth season.
Once his sitcom had come to an end, Seinfeld appeared in several comedy specials, including a 2002 documentary charting his life on the road titled Comedian. He wrote some children’s books before catching some flak for the aforementioned animation Bee Movie, the promotion for which included his going down a zip wire from the top of a hotel at the Cannes film festival dressed as a giant bee.
Rather more successfully, he started an online series called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, which was nominated for several Emmy awards over a seven-year run, and he has recently returned to live comedy, while raking in the money thanks to a deal with Netflix to stream Seinfeld.
Bizarrely, he also made a film last year about the creation of breakfast snack Pop-Tarts called Unfrosted, which served as his directorial debut. A particularly scathing review called it “One of the decade’s worst movies”, although it was nominated for a Primetime Emmy.
