Julia Louis-Dreyfus Rewatches Seinfeld, Veep, Enough Said, Wakanda Forever & More

I had the wonderful opportunity once

to meet Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

And she told me,

this was back when Antonin Scalia was still alive,

that she and Scalia would get together once a week

and have lunch and talk about the episode

that had just been on,

'cause they were both getting such a kick out of it.

That was like a trophy in and of itself.

Hi, I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus,

and I'm going to revisit some scenes

from throughout my career.

Pray for me.

[energetic music]

[pulsing music]

Go on, leave!

Get out!

But I didn't do anything.

Next!

[audience laughing]

Hello.

[audience laughing]

You.

This is obviously an iconic episode of Seinfeld.

This was based on a real guy in New York

who was referred to as the Soup Nazi there, apparently.

I never went by there and got soup

from him because I was too frightened.

I don't know if you noticed,

but at the beginning of that clip,

that was on Ana Gasteyer,

who was in the very beginning of the scene.

Incidentally, on Ana Gasteyer was

in the same class with my sister,

and I babysat her and my sister when she was little.

So go figure.

The other thing I was struck by,

watching this, is my voice has changed.

My voice was higher back then

than it is now.

Than it is now.

I don't want soup.

I can make my own soup.

Five cups chopped porcini mushrooms,

half a cup of olive oil,

three pound celery.

That is my recipe for a wild mushroom.

Yeah, that's right.

I do know that after this episode aired and the Soup Nazi,

I don't know what its real, the real name

of his establishment was in New York.

Obviously it wasn't the Soup Nazi.

All of a sudden, he got crazy business.

Lines were out the door forever and ever and ever.

And evidently Jerry went in after the fact,

and he was livid with Jerry

because he didn't want this business.

This was not the, he just,

it was making his life a horror

because it was too much work.

That's what I was told.

You're through, Soup Nazi.

[audience laughing]

Pack it up.

No more soup for you.

Next!

[audience laughing]

Any job is great training

if you're paying attention as an actor.

And that certainly was the case working on Seinfeld

because, first of all,

I was surrounded by these comic geniuses.

We were all working together,

and I think learning from one another.

But really, honestly,

I learned a lot watching Michael and Jason.

And Jerry and Larry were incredibly hard workers

and really killed themselves making this show.

So I witnessed all of that,

and I got a good understanding

of what it meant to produce

and what the value was in producing.

And that's why I, in my subsequent jobs,

I was always producing.

[upbeat music]

Oh, what about that?

[Gary gasps] Respect.

You know, the Aretha Franklin song?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would be great. Hey, Mike.

Mike [glass shattering]

Okay, so that was from season two, episode nine.

This episode was called Running.

This was actually a very hard shot to get

because it was multiple special effects.

If I recall correctly,

it was like plexi and then breakaway glass.

And so what I was doing was banging

into the plexi and then they had these squibs

that were gonna make the breakaway glass shatter.

But we were having trouble with the timing of it.

We had four breakaway sort of setups.

And on each of the first three that we tried,

the glass would shatter too late.

So I'd walk into it,

and then it would be seconds, seconds, brr, like that!

And so it absolutely did not work.

And people were really wringing their hands

because this was a very expensive setup to create.

And we were on our final breakaway glass.

And in this instance, it worked.

Thank God.

Prior to this moment,

I'm talking to my team about the music

that I want playing when I'm coming out

and announcing my run.

What about that?

Respect.

You know, the Aretha Franklin song?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That would be great. Hey, Mike!

Mike. [glass shattering]

[Julia laughing]

I was particularly pleased with that choice

because I thought it was a lovely juxtaposition

to walking through a glass door.

Oh my God. Duchess is down.

Duchess is down.

Yellow, yellow.

I repeat, Duchess is down.

Go, Rick. Go, go, go, go, go!

[gasps] Oh God, your face.

[Aide] We're gonna need a medic.

Is it bad?

No. Yes!

Karen Kawahara, my makeup artist,

who created all the, my bloody face,

we wanted that to look as real as possible,

but not so terrifying that all of a sudden

the comedy is sucked out of the scene.

So it was an artful job that she did

with the amount of blood and cuts on my face

to make it just right.

And then having my face covered

and coming up and revealing.

I mean, Tony Hale, he's incorrigible.

He can never not laugh in a scene,

so in this case, we, again, had to do multiple takes

because Tony was just.

I mean, it was hilarious to come up

outta here and then be covered in blood

and say, How do I look? [laughing]

It was.

That was a lot of fun to shoot.

[upbeat music]

I am about to become president.

Of America. [laughing]

[Gary crying]

No, no, no, no.

Oh, don't cry.

Don't cry.

Your nose is bleeding.

[Gary sobbing]

You're bleeding.

Oh my God, your bleeding.

Georgia Pritchett, who was one of our producers

and writers on Veep, wrote this particular episode.

What happens to Georgia Pritchett

when she gets excited or over stimulated

or overcome with emotion,

she gets nose bleeds.

So she wrote that into the show.

And then, when we were doing the first table read

of this script, the reading went really well,

and she was overcome.

So she got a nose bleed in the middle

of the table reading and had to exit the premises.

I hope she doesn't mind my telling that story,

but I've told it, so cat's outta the bag.

When I get excited, Put your head back.

my nose bleeds. Well, that's good.

Wait, let me get you a pa.

Oh, shit.

Gary, there's [laughing]

there's no toilet paper. Oh my God.

I love so many things about this.

I love that Gary is treating me like a mental patient.

So I think that's hilarious.

And then, it's also ironic

because Tony Hale and I,

throughout the entire run of this show Veep.

were constantly laughing and had lots

of trouble keeping our shit together doing these scenes

'cause we were just enjoying the scenes so much,

through all the seasons.

In this scene, in which we had to

become hysterical laughing,

it was brutally difficult to do.

And I remember after every take we'd just look

at each other and just drop it and go like,

Oh my God, that is so hard.

Go in my bag. No paper.

What? Go in my bag.

There's tissue in my bag.

[Gary coughing]

[Selina] Okay.

It's in the side pocket. What?

Where is it? It's in the outer.

It's in the outer pocket. What is this,

what is this for?

Oh shit, that looks bad through here.

We chose a bunch of different things

to go into that bag.

That was really fun.

We went to our prop department,

and we were going through a table trying to figure out

what would be believable

but somewhat incongruous items

to have in the bag that we could pull out.

It's also interesting to see

because Selina is so nurturing for a brief moment of Gary.

That doesn't last, of course, but anyway.

I felt very responsible for Veep.

I loved doing the show.

It was an enormous amount of work,

but it was a true labor of love.

[upbeat music]

More guacamole?

No, not for me.

Yes, I'd love some actually.

Do you know how many calories are in guacamole?

10. [chuckles]

Lay off the guy.

He likes his guacamole.

You know what?

Uh, we don't need the guac.

I'll just stick with the cheese.

[Eva chuckles]

I drank like three bottles of wine

before we shot this.

No, I'm kidding. [laughs]

No.

So my character of Eva has become friends

with Albert's ex-wife.

What happens is she's getting information, intel,

about her boyfriend that is pretty negative.

And so it's all starting to come out in this scene.

She's drinking too much,

and she's just tone deaf.

You're picking on him.

No, I'm not.

You are. Huh?

No.

You kind of are.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I've just never in my entire life

have I met anybody who couldn't whisper.

When I'm doing a scene like this,

which was sort of, it was dramatic.

And there were many scenes in this movie that were dramatic.

My sort of knee jerk reaction

when I'm working is to find the funny

and explore the nooks and crannies

of the scene with a comic eye.

I didn't know Jim Gandolfini before we made Enough Said,

and I was thrilled to work

with him because I was such a fan of his.

I really do believe he was like Marlon Brando

in terms of his abilities as an actor.

In this movie,

this is actually what he was very much like personally.

He was a teddy bear.

He was a tender guy.

And so I'm very happy that he made this film,

not only because I got to work with him,

but the public got to see him not as a mafia boss

but as somebody closer to himself,

who was very vulnerable and very kindhearted.

Although I will say that that part of him,

I would say, was very much underneath Tony Soprano.

And I would suggest

that one of the reasons, among many,

that he was so good at Tony Soprano was that

that vulnerability was in place.

And that made his character much more complicated

and interesting to watch.

[upbeat music]

Hey, Mom.

What?

This potato salad's so good.

Can I take some of it home with me?

Oh, please, I have plenty.

I have too much.

Take some tinfoil.

What?

Nicole Holofcener, who directed this film,

we met first on Enough Said.

And I loved her

practically from the minute I first met her.

This was an utter joy to do.

This day, when we were shooting

around the table and in her kitchen,

everybody was just firing on all cylinders.

I was gonna just put it in one of these things.

You got like 3,000 of 'em.

No, no, just wrap it in tinfoil.

Oh, that's hilarious.

I'm not going to put potato salad

in tinfoil, Mom.

That is just, that's totally gross.

It's crazy.

Mom?

And by the way, that potato salad was very good, for real.

Actually, I am remembering that.

The food actually was delicious.

[upbeat music]

[Everett] Director de Fontaine?

Really?

Well, agent thinks it was the Wakandans.

We've been on every one of them

since they took out our ship.

That's why I wanted you here.

I met with Kevin Feige

and the fancy people over at Marvel.

We had a meeting.

Those guys were big Seinfeld fans,

as a matter of fact.

We talked about Seinfeld a lot. [laughs]

And Veep too, as a matter of fact.

And I said if anything ever came up,

I'd love to do it.

Why wouldn't I wanna do it?

It's a whole other genre.

I think it would be cool for a woman my age

to be in this universe.

Anyway, long story short,

they called me and they said,

Well, we got something for you.

Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is

a real character in the comics,

and she's sort of a Nick Fury type.

And so I was on board.

I'm really looking forward to delving more

into her, which I'll be doing later.

[gentle music]

You're looking good.

Oh.

Well, I try.

[Valentina] You put that home gym in?

[Everett] Yeah, last year.

Maybe I'll drop by some time and jump on your Peloton.

I'm gonna be in Thunderbolts.

We're about to start shooting that momentarily.

And Valentina is gonna be quite the force.

I'm looking forward to working with Florence Pugh again

and Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, and David Harbour.

I mean, it's a really good group of actors,

and I'm excited about it.

I'm particularly excited about it

because it's very character driven this particular movie.

So I think it'll be fun.

I think Marvel fans will dig it.

[gentle music]

I'm happy that I've been able to do this thing

that I really wanted to do from a very young age.

And the fact that it's worked out is

just such a blessing.

And there's so much luck involved.

Things have lined up in just a certain way.

And the fact that I'm making a living doing this

just blows my mind.

This used to be an extracurricular activity

when I was in school,

and now it's the job.

I'm thrilled.

Okay.

Well, thanks for watching.

[energetic music]