Ted Danson wasn’t an early fan of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
The Emmy winner, 76, recently told “Curb” star J.B. Smoove that before he and his wife, Mary Steenburgen, appeared on the sitcom, they watched the very first episode and “thought it absolutely sucked.”
“I’ve told this story before, but we watched the pilot of Curb,” Danson said on his SiriusXM podcast “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” on Wednesday.
“Mary thought it was great. I thought it sucked. I thought it absolutely sucked and I felt sorry for my new friend, Larry David.”
Danson explained that to be “encouraging” to David, 77, who created, wrote and starred in “Curb,” he promised the fellow actor that he and Steenburgen, 71, would play themselves on the show.
“And in that sort of idiocy, I ended up being part of something that changed my life,” Danson said.
Danson played a fictionalized version of himself on over 30 episodes of “Curb” during its 12-season run that stretched from 2000 to 2024.
Steenburgen, who wed Danson in 1995, was in six episodes of the show. Like her husband, she portrayed a fictionalized version of herself.
“Curb really did change my life because it reinvigorated my desire to be funny,” Danson explained to Smoove, 58.
In “Curb,” Smoove played Larry’s housemate Leon Black. The main cast also included David, Jeff Garlin, Cheryl Hines and Susie Essman.
Last month, Danson appeared on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and talked about how David made him and Steenburgen get divorced on the show so he could date Hines’ character.
“I’m an actor, I know I’m just pretending, but it didn’t feel that way,” Danson said.
“I go to work and it’s, ‘Oh by the way, you’ve divorced Mary and you’re dating Cheryl.’ And I had to go home and tell Mary,’” Danson recalled. “She’s an actor. She also understands. But it was so personal.”
The “Man on the Inside” star added, “And people who we knew, who knew us well, would call after they saw the show and go, ‘Oh my god.’ And Mary would go, ‘Yeah right. We decided to announce it on a sitcom.’”
“Curb Your Enthusiasm” lasted for 120 episodes. The series finale aired on April 7.
Danson told Parade before the final episode of “Curb” that the show “revitalized my desire to be around funny because it was so effortless.”
“You just showed up and played,” he said. “And so I owe Larry David a great deal and I love him even though he is a pain in the a-s.”
