Susie Essman said she heavily researched Susan B. Anthony for Larry David’s HBO series “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” but realized during filming that the work didn’t serve the scene. Essman discussed the experience in an extended interview with
Susie Essman didn’t walk into her role as a fictionalized Susan B. Anthony expecting a detour. She started by going deep—then learned, once she was working directly with Larry David, that the heavy prep didn’t fit what the scene demanded.
In an extended conversation with “CBS Sunday Morning. ” Essman explained that she had “done a lot of research on Susan B. Anthony before” she took on the part. She said she watched Ken Burns’ documentary on Anthony and “read all about her. ” adding that Anthony was “a really interesting woman.” But once filming began. Essman realized the effort wouldn’t translate the way she hoped.
“none of that served me any purpose in doing the scene,” Essman said.
David didn’t let that statement stand on its own for long. “Of course not!” he retorted during the exchange.
The discussion quickly turned to what viewers often assume about the show itself—especially around Larry David. Essman described the question she hears more than any other: whether “Larry really” is like the character audiences see on screen.
“And they assume that that’s you,” Essman said of viewers, before posing a point back to David. “You know how we always say this show Larry and there’s real Larry?”
David confirmed the idea, and Essman continued by clarifying what she believes is happening on screen. “And show Larry is the Larry that people see,” she said. “’Cause I get asked more than any other question, is Larry really like his character? And you’re not what you are, as we know.”
Essman then sharpened the distinction in her own casting of the analogy. “It’s show Larry playing these. Same thing in my — it was Susie Greene playing Susan B. Anthony. It wasn’t Suzy Essman playing Susan B. Anthony.”
That separation is baked into the show’s format. In “Life. Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. ” David plays multiple historical figures across 30-minute episodes. turning famous moments into a stream of comic character work. The series includes, for example, David as Explorer Lewis Merriwether opposite Jerry Seinfeld’s William Clark. The show also features Abraham Lincoln’s aide (with Bill Hader in a beard) on the day the president was killed.
Essman’s revelation about her Anthony prep lands as a small but telling piece of the larger point the show keeps making: what matters is not who you’ve studied, but what the scene—and the character—actually requires when the work starts.
Susie Essman Larry David HBO Life Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness Susan B. Anthony CBS Sunday Morning Ken Burns Explorer Lewis Merriwether Jerry Seinfeld William Clark Bill Hader Abraham Lincoln