TV Feature: Kramer vs Kramer

Without doubt, Seinfeld’s Kramer is one of the funniest and most original characters to ever stutter and shake his way through a TV sitcom. Filmink’s James Mitchell met Michael Richards, the man behind the myth, in Sydney recently.

Undoubtedly the defining comedy of the 90’s, the gloriously unsentimental Seinfeld tattooed itself on popular culture with phenomenal success. Branded as a show about nothing, it was really about the minutiae of sex, dating, friendship and a myriad other life matters.

It introduced us to such phrases as “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”, and “These pretzels are making me thirsty”, not to mention its characters: wise cracking Jerry, sassy Elaine, desperate George and the eccentric, bumbling chaos of Cosmo Kramer.

In Sydney recently for a publicity tour for the release of Seinfeld on DVD, it’s clear that like his character Kramer, actor Michael Richards can be unpredictable. Richards, gracious and polite, inexplicably impersonates a swearing Elmo from Sesame Street and then a vertically challenged Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame – almost like Kramer on speed.

When probed about his attraction to the physical comedy embodied in the character, Richards transforms just as quickly to his quieter, contemplative self. “I love odd people. Eccentricity, I love it,” says Richards. “When I go for a walk, what catches my attention is some fellow over by the grass with one of these devices looking for metal in the ground. I’m just fascinated because he’s clearly moving along in a way that most people don’t.”

Cue wise Kramer mode. “It’s odd, it’s different, it’s extraordinary. It’s Extra Ordinary. I look for the Extra Ordinary in life.”

Indeed, Richards has made a career out of playing the eccentric in films like Unstrung Heroes and Problem Child and on television has appeared as a calamitous overgrown child in the short lived sketch comedy Fridays, and also as Dick Williams, a bumbling “Fitness Trainer to the Stars” on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

This love of the unusual coupled with a well honed skill in physical comedy gave Richards an instinct for the spirit and stride of Cosmo Kramer. He auditioned for the role upside down. “I do yoga and I could do headstands,” he says. “Rather than just standing there and saying the lines I just went into a headstand. Then I fell over backwards, of course, and everyone broke up into laughter. When I got back on my feet I just resumed the lines as if nothing had happened. I thought that was the key to the character.”

For Richards, 55, sans Kramer skyscraper hair and retro attire, the character seems like an old friend, one that would continue to appear even when the cameras weren’t rolling.

 “I stayed in Kramer a lot. As soon as I came to my dressing room on the set, I’d slip my shoes off and walk around in Kramer’s shoes,” Richards says clicking his fingers as if to signify the identity change. “I’d play Kramer eating lunch, where ever, all the time I’d be on as Kramer. It just helped to find the character in all circumstances.”

Richards refers to playing the loveable, accident prone entrepreneur as channeling, as if Kramer took temporary hostage of his body.

“It just came through. You’d get these ideas and go with it,” he recalls. “I was working with a crew of people - Jerry and [series co-creator] Larry David - that just let me go. Where that stuff came from, it makes me humble. I don’t pretend to have invented the character, it’s more like the character invented me. It had a destiny of its own. There was a creative process and I can’t take full responsibility for the outcome.”

Such was Richards’ physical spontaneity on set  – he’d add moments not in the script such as bursting in and out of Jerry’s apartment  – that one camera was kept wide at all times to capture his antics.

“I would lay down on the floor before I would perform and I’d visualise the scene. I didn’t let anyone know what I was going to do so I would surprise everyone. But everyone caught on to my shenanigans, they knew that something was going to happen,” he says with Krameresque cocked eyebrow and cheeky grin. “If it was in the script that I was with Jerry and we’re trying to find a seat in a movie theatre - going along the row there - you could bet I was going to do something with that.”

Surprisingly, the recent recording of the DVD commentary with co-stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Jason Alexander was the first time Richards had seen the majority of Seinfeld episodes (some of which have been restored to their original length rather than the requisite 22 minutes). He attributes this to his self consciousness, a trait that would rarely afflict the extraverted Kramer.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

“I don’t like to watch myself when I perform, I get so self conscious. I like working from the inside out, I like to work straight off the cuff. It’s like looking at yourself in the mirror - you’ve got to be careful, your stride can become artificial.”

There was never any danger of that.

First published in Filmink Magazine, January 2005.