“I’m going to give you the honest answer, are you ready?” Seinfeld legend Jason Alexander tells me from a studio in Los Angeles where he’s filming the latest Uber Eats ad.
“It’s very flattering when people say, ‘How do you choose your projects? Of all of the things that come your way, how do you choose?’ There are about 20 people who are actually choosing between different projects. Everyone else is going, ‘You want me!? Oh my god! That’s so sweet!’ Unless it’s porn or working with satan, we generally go, ‘That sounds like fun!'”
Jason is the latest icon to be hand-picked by Uber to clown around in one of its dazzling ad campaigns, along with the likes of Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian and Magda Szubanski for the ‘Tonight, I’ll Be Eating’ campaign as well as Abbie Chatfield, Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Nicola Coughlan and Tom Felton for ‘You Can Get Almost Anything’.
“I saw a couple of the other Uber Eats ads and they’re great! They’re fun, they’re really well done, so I was thrilled,” Jason said.
“The idea of the canned laughter is brilliant. It was an easy yes.”
Uber Eats has knocked it out of the park once again with this concept. In the ad, Jason is an actor who once made audiences cackle, but nowadays, he can barely get a single giggle out of his dinner guests.
GEORGEY BOY!!!!! (Credit: Uber Eats)
Enter, Uber’s ‘You Can Get Almost Anything’ magic and BOOM! Canned laughter appears at his door and he’s a comedy genius once again.
But as always, the trickery quickly goes awry.
See for yourself below:
Uber Eats has made this ’90s kid’s dreams come true by flying me to LA, not just to watch the ad be filmed, but also to interview George Constanza himself.
While chatting to George, I mean Jason, I tell him that he has a reputation for being a nice guy who always has time for fans, and he goes on to tell me the story of a sweet interaction with a fan in Melbourne.
“I have many [stories], but the one that I always think of that gives you the character of Australia in a nutshell is, I was at the Crown Casino in Melbourne and I was waiting with a couple of other people, nobody I knew, for a seat at a poker table to open up. And a lovely guy who was waiting next to me with his teenage son says, ‘Sorry buddy, my son’s a big fan. Could I take a pic?’ I go, ‘Yeah, sure! Absolutely, please!’
“That’s all that happened. You would have thought I had donated a kidney, his reaction was, ‘You’re a champion! You’re a champion! I am buying you a pint!’ And I go, ‘Okay, it’s just a picture!’ There’s many things about the Australian character that I really like, and that is one of them. This idea that people who have achieved some notoriety and success, if they act like a regular human being there’s an appreciation of that. I don’t think there should be, we should all be acting like regular human beings. But there’s something very sweet when someone does that. We’re all just people!”
We go on to discuss the most iconic sitcom of all time and whether or not a Seinfeld would work for the iPhone generation of today, and he enlightens me with his theory that we’ve already had it with one show in particular.
“To some degree, I think there have been other iterations of it. The one that’s most obvious to me that came right after us is It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. To me, it has a similar vibe to it and I’m sure there are others, forgive me all my colleagues, I don’t watch a lot of scripted television these days,” he says.
“It would look and feel and sound different because there’s a different vibe, sensibility, knowledge… every generation has its own trademark signature things about them, but yeah, of course!”
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the sitcom that’s come closest to Seinfeld, in Jason’s opinion. (Credit: FX)
With the idea of iPhones, Seinfeld and reunions in mind, I asked Jason if there’s a Seinfeld group chat with the Fab Four: Jason, Michael Richards, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and, of course, Jerry Seinfeld.
“No… if there is, they’ve left me out of it. No, we don’t get to interact all that much. Our lives went in very different directions,” he said, much to the disappointment of many fans, I’m sure.
“I’m actually more in touch with some of the second ring of cast members like Bryan Cranston, Jerry Stiller and Estelle Harris who I loved and adored, Patrick Warburton who I would see frequently, Wayne Knight, I would see frequently. But when we finished, the central four of us, we were each caught up in other things, and we kind of went, ‘See ya!’ It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s have dinner Saturday!’ So before you know it, years have gone by and you go, ‘You know who I haven’t seen in a while?’
“It’s also the kind of thing where, and this has happened many times over the years, if one of us reaches out and goes, ‘I’m doing a thing, could you participate?’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, of course!’ I’ve talked to Julia when she has a film coming out, I was just texting back and forth with Michael about his book which I thought was terrific, so the contact is there, but it’s not a lot of social chit chat, the way I might have with other friends.”
Can you just imagine the banter in a Seinfeld group chat? (Credit: NBC)
And finally, I asked if there were any scenes or moments from Seinfeld that haunt him to this day, and his response was basically that there’s too many to name, so no!
“All of it! The thing about film is they yell action and you’ve gotta go! ‘Here’s what I’ve got, I hope this works,’ then they yell cut and you’ve gotta move on. Then the next day you think, ‘Oh, you know what I could’ve done?’ It isn’t an issue for me now because the show is so far behind me, I can’t even remember what I was thinking. I used to have a little bit of a harder time back then because of that, but now I look at it and go, ‘Oh, that’s cute!'”
Catch the full interview with Jason Alexander for more Seinfeld tea below:
The full campaign will premiere during the half time show of the AFL Grand Final.
The post Jason Alexander On Uber Eats Ad, Scenes That Haunt Him & The Sitcom That Came Closest To Seinfeld appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
