chatting with susie essman

October 16, 2009                                                                                        

We Know What Susie Would Say

by Christine Gerani

We had opportunity to speak this afternoon with Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Susie Essman to chat about her new book; What Would Susie Say? – Bullshit Wisdom About Love Life and Comedy. Susie will be in Huntington, NY at the Book Revue, Tuesday October 20^th at 7pm to discuss and sign her new masterpiece. Enjoy this fun and lively interview between Susie and SpotonLI!

 

Christine – Susie congratulations on all of your success.  Tell us about your new book.

Susie – Well, the book is called What Would Susie Say? – Bullshit Wisdom About Love Life and Comedy. Or as Al Roker said, Wisdom about Love, Life and Comedy. The thing that I want people to know with the book is that it’s not Susie Green.  People have the hardest time with me because they think I’m Susie Green.  It’s a thing I do called acting!  And I love Susie Green and I love playing Susie Green, but I’m not her.  So the book is really a compilation of essays, but it’s about just so many things in my life, some of it is just pure funny stuff.  Like one chapter I was talking about “Weather Porn” which is about how my husband is obsessed with the weather channel.

There’s a lot of stuff about being a parent.  I have 4 teenage children, actually one of them is 20 today so I can’t say that any longer, but she’s still a teenager.  There’s chapters about how I started doing stand up and how difficult it was for me and coming out of a deep depression and realizing my dream in life. There are chapters about my fathers’ death and how I learned to love sports and became close to him through my love of sports.  I left my heart in the Bronx.  I just got married for the first time a year ago at 53 years old.  There’s a chapter about Curb, the inside scoop and the back scene dish on Curb.  There’s a lot of different stuff, so I kind of sat down and wrote down; what is everything that I have to say?  And said it! 

I’m the friend that everybody comes to for advice, so I figured maybe there’s something in here that somebody can use.

Christine – My husband and I saw you and Lewis Black at Gotham Comedy Club earlier this year and you both were absolutely amazing. Now you’re doing a book tour, is it anything like doing a comedy club tour?  Is it more work? 

Susie – It’s more for me cause I’m doing both, so I’m doing stand up. I’ll be at Caroline’s in Manhattan October 22nd, 23rd and 24th and then I do all the TV shows here next week, Martha and Joy Behar’s new show.  Doing the Today Show again at 10.  I’m doing the Daily Show and then I go to LA and I do Conan, Chelsea Handler and then I go to St. Louis and then I go to Chicago, and in Chicago I’m doing a Comedy Club.

It’s actually great I feel like I worked really really hard to get to this part. I’ve been doing stand up for 25 years. I’ve been doing Curb, this is our 7th season and I worked hard to get to this point so these are good problems to have.

Christine – You write in the book about your aversion to shaking people’s hands because of germs (I’m a germaphobe) are you shaking people’s hands at your book signings or wearing surgical gloves?

Susie – I’ll be shaking people’s hands and then Purelling it!  I wish we can all get out of the habit and take a page out of Howie Mandels book.

Christine – I heard he’s a huge germaphobe.

Susie – Christine you say germaphobe as though it’s a negative thing.  It’s proven that germs are passed through the hands by touching hands. It’s not like having some crazy OCD, washing my hands fifteen times an hour.

Christine – I agree I’m not like that but I do carry a little something with me to protect myself from the flu.

Susie – As you should! There was an article in the New York Times the other day about this very thing, about the swine flu, about washing your hands and using hand sanitizer.  I actually showed it to my kids and I said “You see I’m not crazy”.

Christine – In Chapter 6 – You also spoke about being pre-menopausal – and one of the symptoms is loss of focus – repeating stories over and over again – my husband does that.  Do you think maybe he’s pre-menopausal?

Susie – They do say that there is such a thing as male menopause.  I’m not sure what that is.  For some guys it’s going out and buying a Jaguar. My husband repeats himself non-stop too.  I think it’s just guys they’re kind of just boring.

Christine – Simon and Schuster is running a contest where the grand prize is a phone call from you to the winner – and you basically mock them and curse them out – does it ever get old, being asked to curse people out?

Susie – Ya know it gets a little bit annoying sometimes because people stop me in the street all the time.  I live in Manhattan, so I walk the streets, I’m not a streetwalker, but I walk the streets.  They stop me all the time and want me to just curse at them.  Now this is what I do for a living. Would they stop a dentist and ask him to drill?  My dad was a doctor and I know how annoying it got to him, people would constantly be at a party and ask him medical stuff.  But I do that too, everybody does that with medical stuff.

Christine – That’s true.  It’s medical and we need to know these things.

Susie – Cause we’re all hypochondriacs. Ya know this is how I make a living; I get paid a lot of money to tell people to go fuck themselves!

Christine – That’s a great job to have though! You have 4 teenagers; do you have to ever correct them to for using foul language?

Susie – No that would be so hypocritical. And they don’t really, like if something goes wrong they’ll say “oh shit”.  But they’re not bad.

Christine – I love this quote from your book “My mother used to tell me ‘you can’t buy your kids’ love.’ Bullshit. You can, and it’s exponential. They’re like Russian mail-order brides — the more you spend, the more they love you.” I have a stepdaughter too and she’s twenty years old, and I agree.  I haven’t seen her in weeks because I haven’t bought her anything! (kidding)

Susie – But you know what I mean.  It’s not literally, and it wasn’t that contrived where I said I am going to buy these kids love but …it worked!

Christine – When you’re a step-parent it’s a different world.

Susie – How old were you when you had her?

Christine – I just got married 4 years ago.

Susie – And she’s 20 so she was 16…that’s prime spending years honey.

Christine – She knows what she can get away with, like coming to me before Dad.

Susie – Well actually they know I’m the strict one.

Christine – How do you get away with that?

Susie – Because they know that if they cross me, they won’t get the gift.

Christine – What do you hope people take away from reading the book?

Susie – I hope that they laugh because it’s important to make people laugh and I hope they take away some value system of things that are important to me, of caring about other people.  I have a whole letter that I write to my children in there about kindness and paying attention to life and doing what you want in life.  One of the reasons I wrote it is because I wanted my kids to see what I went through in the early years because when they met me I was already successful. I wanted them to see how much I struggled and held on to my dreams and what I had go through to get to where I am.  So you know nothing comes easily and you can’t plan life, my life has been so haphazard in so many ways. My grandmother used to say, it’s a Yiddish proverb, “You make plans and God laughs” and I think the best thing in life is to be able to roll with the punches and not take yourself too seriously.  Whatever you think you want, the unexpected is usually better.

Christine – You have a book signing on Tuesday October 20th at The Book Revue in Huntington – do you visit Long Island often?

Susie – I’ve done tons of country clubs in Long Island over my years. I was out in Sag Harbor performing at the Bay Street Theatre. I’m quite familiar with Long Island.

Christine – How do you think the Yankees are going to do in the Playoffs?

Susie – I’m a Yankee Fan!  I’m going tonight in the freezing wet cold.  I think actually they’re going to do really well and I think that the weather is really on their side because they’re playing a California team.

Christine – We’ll be thinking about you tonight, and I think that they’re going to do well, A-Rod, I think he’s now a real team player.

Susie – Ya know what’s interesting about A-Rod, I always kind of felt like there was something not real about A-Rod and I think that he had a secret and I think that once that secret came out it was this huge relief for him.  If you notice all year there wasn’t all this A-Rod dish, nobody even cared about Kate Hudson.  I think that when people have a secret, whatever it is whether they’re using steroids or in the closet, whatever it is, lying about who they really are there’s a problem and they can’t be there best selves.  I think his secret came out and he’s not afraid of it coming out anymore.  People have said to me you’re so honest in this book and you reveal so much about yourself. Hey, I’ve got nothing to hide. No one can David Letterman me!

Susie Essman will be at The Book Revue in Huntington October 20th at 7pm!

She will also be performing at  Carolines in NYC October 22nd-24th!

For more information about Susie’s new book What Would Susie Say? – Bullshit Wisdom About Love Life and Comedy please visit

Simon and Schuster or her website SussieEssman.com

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