Lewis, who announced last year that he had Parkinson's disease, played himself as David's friend on the show (as he was in real life). He and Essman, the comedian and actress behind the invective Susie Greene, the wife of David's manager, provoked very different reactions from fans, he recalled.
“When I've been with her in public, they want her to yell things at them,” he said. “For me, it's like, 'You're going to be okay, Richard.'”
He called me directly, rather than having a publicist connect us, as is more common, and seemed happy to stay on the phone and crack jokes.
Listening to the recording of our conversation Wednesday after the news of his death at age 76, I hear a lot of my own laughter. Lewis was effortlessly funny and clever.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Jeff Garlin for hanging in there,” he said of the comedian who plays David's manager and Essman's beleaguered husband, the object of his impromptu, expletive-filled rants. “I mean, it's a TV show, but how does he have any self-esteem left after what he's taken? It is simply a bombardment. Every time he finishes a scene, he looks like he's limping back from the Civil War. It's all bloody.
“There should have been a corner man,” he continued, gaining momentum. “You know, like in 'Rocky,' Burgess Meredith, for any actor who takes insults from him. There should always be a chair, with a coach, putting smelling salts under the actors' noses.”
David, who created “Curb” and played an improved version of himself, has repeatedly said that the current season, its 12th, would be its last, but Lewis said it was “supposedly” the last season.
“It's such a melancholy air, you know, talking about people in the past tense,” he joked, as if his friends were gone. “But I'll do my best.”
“Curb” began airing on HBO in 2000 and once took a six-year hiatus between seasons. Did Lewis imagine David would change his mind about ending it now? “He's always changed his mind,” Lewis said.
The two met as kids at summer camp and had been friends for most of their lives, including in their early days as comedians in New York, Lewis said, recalling: “I always had a notebook with me, from the day 1, and Larry too. And we wrote the premises, wherever we were.”
He preferred comedians who were authentically themselves, he added. “Without sounding too pompous about it, I always liked comedians who were equal on and off stage. There wasn't too much fake stuff, they didn't create a character, they just were who they were.”
He called David “the storyteller of my generation,” comparing him to Norman Lear.
“He's not going to stop writing things,” Lewis said. On the other hand, almost a quarter of a century is a pretty long period.
“I've always been very fortunate to be on this program and very grateful,” he said. But there was one thing that bothered him: that he didn't get more screen time with Essman (who didn't look much like his character, he noted, and with whom he happily toured).
“I'm in the scene, eating ravioli, while she's yelling at everyone but me, for some reason,” he said. “Apparently I'm a good guy.” If she'd had the chance, she “would have done everything she could to ruin the scene, just to make her mad at me.”
He hinted that there would be that moment in an upcoming episode. “Maybe I'll get a chance to hear her get mad at me.”
And if not, he had a plan. “If Susie gets a show, say, if her name was just 'Susie,' she would beg him to at least have a guest spot on it,” she said of David. “Please let me do something that will horrify her. I do not want money. Don't pay me. Maybe I have to fly to New York, sneak into Susie's house and get mad at her. In fact, don't tell her, but I plan to play a horrible prank on her so I can bear the brunt of her anger.
“If all the news is fit for publication, so be it,” he continued, really cooking, as he would say. “The truth is, I'm going to get him to yell at me if it's the last thing I do on this planet.”
I laughed and then he did too.
Audio produced by Jack D'Isidor.
