Reflections on Seinfeld's Finale

But also that little bit of discontent among the ranks.

I'll even give you a little bit more.

Because Julia, Michael, and I are not partners in the syndication of the

show,

in which there was an enormous amount of profit to be made,

we could no longer root for the longevity of the show because

we knew historically, you play an

iconic character on a TV series, your career may be

done.

So we were going to have to spend an awful lot of time and energy

getting the next gig if we were ever going to work again.

And since Seinfeld wasn't going to be the annuity

for us that it was gonna be for Jerry and Larry and a couple of the other

partners,

continuing to make more of them was a self-defeating prophecy.

We were going to

contribute to our own eventual demise as actors.

Um, we would've set ourselves up even better

as, you know, having enough money to

live off the rest of our lives. Financially, we could've done fine.

But we were all still relatively young, and we wanted to do other things with our

careers, and this thing was gonna stop us dead, and

we weren't gonna profit from it. So we kinda went,

"It's enough.

Let's...

We've, we've done it. We've made a healthy living off it,

and the show

is at its natural endpoint, so let's

add all those factors together,

and let's put it to bed with dignity, and while the people still love it."

Jerry did something

at the finale that was, um, extraordinary.

Um, we used to do a thing before every taping.

It was stupid.

We'd be behind the set,

and they introduce you to the audience, which is, yeah, like we need to be

introduced. But, um,

so before we would come running out as individuals, we, the four of us would be

behind the set, and we would do this thing called the

circle of power, which was

so stupid, but we'd basically just hold hands and go,

"Ah!" That's all it was.

It was nothing. We didn't say good luck.

We didn't say, "You nervous about anything?" We didn't...

It was just stupid.

But it was tradition, so we did it every show.

So now we're at the finale, and it's the last live taping,

and there's all this energy going on, and it's the four of us back there,

and we get into the hand hold, and Jerry goes, "I wanna say something."

Uh, okay. Now, we had been through a lot at this point.

It had been a,

in some ways, again, not on the set, but off the set,

a little bit of a bumpy time.

He said, "For the rest of our lives,

when anyone thinks of one of us, they will think of all four of us,

and I can't think of three people I'd rather have that be true of."

I'm gone. Julia's gone. Michael's like, "Uh,

uh," and now they go, "The cast of Seinfeld." We come running

out,

and we must look like we got hit by a truck because

that was a huge thing. First of all, it was true,

and it was true in our hearts,

and, um, we had been through a rough year, and that was a big

gesture on his part, and it was very meaningful.

So it was a, it was a special time.