Man Orders Pizza, Throws Away Leftovers—Horror at What Roommate Does Next
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
The internet is captivated after a Reddit user shared a hilariously awkward moment involving leftover pizza, a trash can, and a new roommate.
Redditor u/FlounderIll1896 posted their mortifying tale on the platform, and it quickly gained traction in the subreddit "confession" with 35,000 upvotes. The post has since been deleted.
"My roommate caught me doing something weird and it got even weirder and now I probably have to move away, change my identity and start a new life," they wrote.
According to the original poster (OP), a few days ago their new roommate ordered pizza, ate most of it, and then casually tossed the remaining slices in the trash before heading to his room.
A stock image of leftover pizza in the trash.
A stock image of leftover pizza in the trash.
AndreyPopov/iStock / Getty Images Plus
The poster, who was struggling financially after a recent move, admitted they couldn't understand why someone would discard perfectly good pizza. Without overthinking it, they retrieved the box from the bin, checked the two remaining slices, and ate them quickly.
What they didn't realize was that their roommate had quietly returned. The poster was mid-bite when they noticed him standing there, watching in stunned silence. In a panic, they swallowed and blurted out, "are you okay?"—a moment they now deeply regret.
They said the roommate looked confused, nodded, and immediately retreated back to his room. Feeling the moment was already beyond salvageable, they finished the second slice. Since then, the roommate has been avoiding them.
Expert Insight
Nick Leighton, etiquette expert and co-host of Were You Raised By Wolves?, weighed in on the situation.
"If you're going to eat trash pizza, at least put it on a plate! Linen napkin optional. (I say that as a joke!)" he told Newsweek.
But on a more serious note, Leighton explained that in etiquette, it's often not the act itself but how it's handled afterward that matters most.
He suggested the best way forward is through open communication: a direct but polite conversation to address what happened and create mutual boundaries moving forward.
"Perhaps one roommate can agree to offer unwanted pizza to the other before tossing it. And perhaps the other roommate can agree that once something goes in the trash, it's now off-limits for retrieval," he said. Pretending nothing happened, he added, is unlikely to warm things up again.
Reddit Reacts
The Reddit community had a field day with the story, particularly OP's choice of words in the moment.
"'Are you okay' through a mouthful of trash pizza is so f**** funny,"** said one user.
"It is right up there with 'May I help you'?" added another.
"It does set up a 'I hate food wastage' conversation. Would look better than immediate trash diver (don't get me wrong, hunger is hunger)," observed a third.
"I was literally thinking the same thing. This post makes me crack up every time I even think about it. I've tried telling it to other people before and I can hardly even get through it," wrote another user.
Newsweek reached out to u/FlounderIll1896 for comment via Reddit. We could not verify the details of the case.
Newsweek's "What Should I Do?" offers expert advice to readers. If you have a personal dilemma, let us know via life@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice on relationships, family, friends, money and work and your story could be featured on WSID at Newsweek.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business of Fashion
an hour ago
- Business of Fashion
The Marketing Magic Behind Sydney Sweeney's American Eagle Campaign
In the week after American Eagle dropped its ad featuring Sydney Sweeney via New York City's Times Square, its stock leapt by 18 percent. While pop culture rarely distracts from business fundamentals on Wall Street, this campaign certainly struck a chord, with retail investors chiming in on Reddit threads about Sweeney's undeniable sex appeal. Other observers questioned whether a brand targeting teens and tweens should lean into such overt sexiness in its marketing. But whether onlookers were intrigued or offended by the racy nature of the ads, Sweeney has no doubt driven much-needed attention to the retailer, which has struggled to deliver compelling assortments in recent seasons. In May, it withdrew its annual forecast in light of macroeconomic uncertainties. 'There's a consumer hunger for more risqué, bold campaigns, especially after a long period where brands were very risk-averse,' said Rebecca Rom-Frank, senior marketing strategist at insights firm WGSN. '[American Eagle] has figured out a way to make this work by partnering with Sydney,' she added. Sweeney has proven to be a lightning rod for brand marketing in recent months. In May, she was the star of another viral campaign for men's soap brand Dr. Squatch, with which she collaborated on a new product called 'Sydney's Bathwater Bliss.' Industry insiders said the stunt helped Dr. Squatch get acquired by Unilever for $1.5 billion in the following month. American Eagle's campaign, called 'Sydney Sweeney Has Good Jeans,' has achieved a more balanced approach. While leaning into the actress's trademark seductiveness, the denim campaign also highlights her sense of humour with videos of the actress 'auditioning' for the ad, driving a vintage car and making puns directly to the camera. It's this self-aware charm that's succeeded in resonating with American Eagle's young shoppers, said the retailer's chief marketing officer Craig Brommers. By working with the star ahead of her appearance in the highly anticipated third season of 'Euphoria,' the campaign is also critical as part of a wider strategy in driving cultural relevance among American Eagle's key Gen Z demographic, aligning the brand with a sense of relatability and nostalgic Americana. '[We're] really trying to play into the duality of Sydney Sweeney, of [an] accessible girl next door … to someone that's defining style and defining culture,' said Brommers. The Sweeney campaign comes on the heels of recent partnerships with tennis player Coco Gauff and 'Wednesday' star Jenna Ortega as American Eagle further establishes itself as an 'entertainment destination,' said Rom-Frank. It has also partnered with TV series 'The Summer I Turned Pretty.' As part of its most recent campaign, Sweeney created a denim style, the 'Sydney Jean,' riffing on American Eagle's 'Dreamy Drape' jeans. The piece is embroidered with a butterfly on the back pocket to highlight domestic violence awareness, and 100 percent of proceeds from the style go towards the Crisis Text Line, a cause of Sweeney's choosing. The retailer also partnered directly with her personal stylist, Molly Dickson, for the campaign — both Sweeney and Dickson have their own 'edit' of the collection on the American Eagle website. In rolling out the campaign, American Eagle has several activations planned over the course of the next four weeks, which Brommers referred to as the retailer's 'Super Bowl' season as shoppers prepare for back-to-school, during which time it sells a pair of jeans every fifty seconds. Not only does it hope to continue to engage its core Gen-Z demographic but the retailer also aims to acquire new customers both among Gen-Z and flanker demographics, including Gen Alpha and Millennials. 'We have to programme these campaigns as if we are programming as an entertainment company,' said Brommers.
Buzz Feed
8 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
Seinfeld Behind-The-Scenes-Facts
Seinfeld is one of the most popular TV sitcoms of all time, even today. For "a show about nothing," there sure is a lot of interesting behind-the-scenes information! Here are 45 facts about Seinfeld: Festivus wasn't invented for the show. It was actually the brainchild of Daniel O'Keefe, the father of Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe. Dan told Uproxx, "It is a fake holiday my dad made up in the '60s to celebrate the anniversary of his first date with my mother, and it was something that we celebrated as a family in a very peculiar way through the '70s, and then I never spoke of it again. I had actually forgotten about it because I had blotted it out of my mind." He continued, "My brother Mark mentioned it to Jeff Schaffer. Jeff told Alec and Dave [Mandel] and, as I recall, they had me meet at Swingers, this diner in Hollywood, and then one of them sat on the other side of me so I couldn't leave. They asked about Festivus, and I said I didn't really want to talk about it. They said, 'Well, Mark told us about it,' and I said, 'That fucker.' They said, 'We think it might be funny in the show,' and I said, 'I think it's a mistake and sort of a family shame.' No one had ever expressed any interest in it before, but I swear I thought it was going to be cut out in the edits." The O'Keefe family's Festivus celebrations weren't exactly like the ones on the show. Dan said, "At the time I was just a terrified staff writer hoping that this episode wouldn't let everyone in America know that my family suffers from mental illness. Each Festivus had a theme, which were always depressing. One was, 'Is there light at the end of the tunnel?' 'Are we too easily made glad?' was one, I believe. My grandmother died the next year, and it was 'A Festivus for the Rest of Us,' meaning the living and not the departed. It's pretty goddamn weird." At first, his dad thought his son was making fun of him, but he "completely embraced it, yes, in a matter of months." The "Soup Nazi" was based on Al Yeganeh, the owner of Soup Kitchen International. In 1989, he told the New Yorker, "I tell you, I hate to work with the public. They treat me like a slave. My philosophy is: The customer is always wrong, and I'm always right. I raised my prices to try to get rid of some of these people, but it didn't work." He reportedly hated the line "no soup for you," hated being called the "Soup Nazi," and didn't think his soup needed "that clown" [Jerry Seinfeld]. It wasn't originally a "show about nothing." In a Reddit AMA, Jerry said, "The pitch for the show, the real pitch, when Larry [David] and I went to NBC in 1988, was we want to show how a comedian gets his material. The show about nothing was just a joke in an episode many years later, and Larry and I to this day are surprised that it caught on as a way that people describe the show, because to us it's the opposite of that." Jason Alexander almost left the show over not appearing in "The Pen." He told Access Hollywood, "There was an episode — remember, Julia was not in the pilot, so there was no Elaine. And suddenly, Jerry had two best friends, one male, one female. And I went, 'Okay, well, how does this work? What's going on?' And very early on, Larry wrote an episode where Elaine and Jerry go to Florida, and Kramer and George are not in that episode. And when Seinfeld started, I had a very successful career in the theater in New York, which is what I thought I was gonna be doing all my life." He continued, "So when I was written out of an episode, I came back the next week, and I said to Larry, 'Look, I know. I get it. But if you do that again, do it permanently. If you don't need me to be here every week' — 'cause I didn't know Seinfeld was gonna be Seinfeld – I said, 'If you don't need me here every week, I'd just as soon go back home and do what I was doing.' ...And he freaked out [about writing for four people], and then he did it. And thank God he didn't say, 'Take a hike,' 'cause I would've had no life." There's a "lost" episode that was never filmed. "The Bet" was written by Larry Charles, who was inspired by fellow writer Elaine Pope. He told Screen Crush, "I can't remember if she was contemplating buying a gun or whether she had already bought a gun, but she felt very justified in buying the gun and would defend that position. And it was also at a time when that was a subject that was finding its way into the media: women buying guns. And I thought that was kind of fascinating. And I think it was as simple as me wondering, 'What if Elaine bought a gun?'" One line in particular didn't sit right with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Joking about shooting herself in the head, Elaine would mention "the Kennedy" in reference to JFK's assassination. The rest of the cast joined her in not wanting to film the episode. Director Tom Cherones told Screen Crush, "As I recall, there was some reference to make a joke called 'a Kennedy.' And that offended me. And I guess it offended the cast as well... I was told to go back to the stage and work on the episode, which is what normally happens. I went back to the stage, and the actors looked at me and said, 'We don't want to do this episode.' I said, 'I agree with you. Guns are not funny, no matter what you say.' I walked back before the network guys left, and I said, 'We don't want to do this episode. That cast and I do not want to do this.'" Writer Peter Mehlman told InsideHook, "We only ever did things out of what was best for the show and the story. I remember we got a call once from Paul McCartney's manager saying he loved the show and would love to be on, but I had to say to his manager, 'Look, Paul's a god to me, but we don't do stunt casting for the sake of stunt casting, it has to fit into the story.' Julia Louis-Dreyfus almost killed me for that." Elaine wasn't originally part of the main cast. However, after the pilot aired, NBC ordered four additional episodes on the caveat that they add a female lead. So, Larry decided to base her on an ex-girlfriend he'd stayed friends with. Monica Yates Shapiro, Larry's ex, told "[Larry] told me they wanted a woman in the show, and he thought of me and our friendship. He had written an episode about the time he met my father." Larry fought against NBC's push to have Jerry and Elaine end up together. Julia told the Sunday Times, "Oh, the network wanted it! They wanted a will-they, won't-they, all that crap. But Larry was just immovable on that point. The show was built on doing things that were outside the norm, so doing something stereotypical would have been atypical of the show." Writer Larry Charles told CBS Mornings, "Julia came into the office one day crying because we were not writing for her; we weren't really giving her great stuff. And it's like, 'Well, how do you fix that?' And Larry had the idea: 'Let's take this George story and just give it to Elaine and see what happens.' And that exploded Elaine, because we'd never written women before, honestly. And so now, we had a way to write a woman that was kind of like the guys. She was as dark, as untrustworthy, as vain as the guys were, and that made her fun – fun to write for and expanded her character." Before Julia auditioned to play Elaine, Megan Mullally, Rosie O'Donnell, and Patricia Heaton read for the role. Kramer was inspired by Larry's real-life neighbor, Kenny Kramer. In 1996, Kenny launched Kramer's Reality Tour, which he told the New York Times was "a shameless attempt to capitalize on [his] illustrious name and branded identity." He and Larry really did leave their doors unlocked and visit each other unnanounced. Larry said, "Kenny was always coming up with these oddball schemes that sounded like they were made up for a television show. He'd talk you into doing something with him, and it would invariably turn out bad for you. He'd do something like disappear and leave you waiting in the car for an hour. This new idea, the Reality Tour, is something that the television Kramer would do. I hope it works out for Kenny better than most of Kramer's ideas on the show." At first, Kenny Kramer — who's a former stand-up comedian — tried to get the role of Kramer on the show. He told the New York Times, "If I'd played Kramer, it never would have flown the way it has with Michael [Richards]. He's the one who came up with the weird clothes and the physical antics that have nothing to do with me. He has to figure a new way to walk in the door every week. It takes amazing preparation, minute detail and a lot of work." On The Howard Stern Show, Jason revealed that Danny DeVito was offered the role of George Costanza. Theorizing why he turned it down, Jason said, "His career, when we started Seinfeld, would've been at its apex. So, he probably didn't wanna do a sidekick role." Jason also said that Chris Rock turned down the role of George. He said, "Why Chris wouldn't do it, I don't know. Maybe it didn't get to an offer stage. I don't know." Jason based George on Woody Allen until he finally realized the character was actually based on Larry David. On All Things Comedy, Jason said, "I go into the series with Woody Allen in my head. There was an episode, and I can't remember what it was, but when we did the table read, I thought the George storyline was a little preposterous. I just thought it was this weird thing, never gonna happen, and they've got me reacting to it in this strange way. So after the table read, I went up to Larry, and I said, 'Larry, you gotta help me with this, because we both know this would never happen in life, and if it did, nobody would react like this. So what are you thinking?' And Larry said, 'I don't know what you're talking about. This happened to me. It's exactly what I did.' And in my head, I went, ' is Larry. Larry is George.'" "I started really looking at Larry and trying to incorporate his tics and his rhythms and some of his personality quirks into George. And I think he knew. We never talked about it, but I think he knew that I finally knew that he knew that I knew. And it made the whole journey much easier, because anytime I didn't understand something on the page, I'd go, 'Oh, but Larry,'" he said. Jason told Foundation Interviews, "What was interesting about our process was — and this is not to diminish the contributions of any of our directors; they were considerable — but our directors didn't stage the show. They didn't come up with business, which was really interesting, because the dynamic of the four of us – Julia and I were classically trained, but Julia's career had been more in sketch. Michael was a stand-up. He had some formal training, but he was a stand-up and sketch and improv. Jerry had a little bit of training, but he was a stand-up. I had no improv, no sketch, but theater. Theater, theater, theater, theater, theater. So we have a lot of different disciplines colliding, and we would all approach material in a slightly different way with slightly different priorities." He continued, "And the four of us would get up, and we would go — because there was no, for the most part, there was no behavior indicated on the page, just dialogue. And we would go, 'Okay, well, what are we doing? What's going on? We can't just stand and talk. What are we doing?' And it was very challenging because, much like Jerry's real life, the sets were minimal. His apartment set, you would never, if you knew you were doing a series for nine years, you would never build that set. First of all, it was tiny, and there was nothing there. There was a couch and a table and a chair and a countertop and a desk way over there in kind of an inaccessible cover of the set and then a bathroom door way up front and a front door. No tchotchkes." He said, "There was nothing there. Nothing to make you go, 'I'm gonna go over there and do this. I'm gonna go over here and play with this. I'm gonna move here. I'm gonna sit here, and now I'm gonna sit here. I'm gonna stand.' So we would actually have to concoct reasons to be there and things to do. And the four of us would get up there, and we'd start reading lines to each other and go, 'Well, we can't just stand here. What are we gonna do?' So I'd say, 'Alright, I just came in off the street. I'm gonna get something out of your refrigerator.' And Jerry [would say], 'You're just gonna go in my refrigerator?' I'd go, 'Yeah, that's what people do. They just, if you're friends, they go in the refrigerator.' 'Okay.' 'And then you go turn on the TV set for no reason, and you...'" "And the four of us started kind of moving each other around and finding ways to use the space and use each other. And I think people talk about the four of us as a unique ensemble, and I agree, I think we were a very unique and chemically perfect ensemble. And I think it grew out of this, 'Alright, you're stuck. Let me help you. If you go over there, I can do this, and if I go over here, you can do that.' That quickly became, 'You know what? This wouldn't be as funny on me as it would be on Julia. Let Elaine do it.' Or her going, 'Well actually, it's a Kramer move. Why doesn't he just [do it]?' SO instead of just worrying so much about, 'What am I gonna do?", our emphasis was on, 'What are we gonna do?' because the four of us can't just stand here and say this stuff. And in trying to figure out as a unit how we were going to make this thing live and breathe like people instead of a radio play, " he concluded. Seinfeld added several now-common words and phrases to our lexicon, such as "yada yada yada," "regifting," "double dipper," and "Not that there's anything wrong with that." According to the New York Times, Jerry's address on the show — 129 West 81st Street — is actually his real former address in New York City. While writing "The Parking Garage," Larry didn't think about shooting the episode. In a behind-the-scenes featurette, he said, "I really didn't think about the execution... I never think about execution, I just think about the show and let somebody else worry about the execution." This led to massive challenges for the production team, who tried and tried to find a real parking garage where they could film, but it just wasn't financially or practically feasible. So, they ultimately decided to strike the permanent sets in their entirety and build a parking garage on the soundstage. To make it look more realistic, they put mirrors on the walls. Production designer Tom Azzari said, "One element that made that entire set work was the ceiling grid. So, I built a ceiling grid, which was only 7'6" high, over the entire stage, and that was 140 feet. Then what we did is build wild columns that would fit underneath the ceiling grid so we could rearrange it to make it different sections. Michael had the props department put a real air conditioner in the box Kramer carried during "The Parking Garage" because he "wanted the real weight" of it. Even during rehearsals, he held it to tire himself out. In the featurette, he said, "When I threw the box into the trunk of the car, banged my face, which was good for the comedy, but I had a bit of a bump... I never broke character. And the ending of "The Parking Garage," where the car doesn't start, wasn't planned at all! Jason said, "Tom Cherones, who was directing, has chewed us out already because we've had the giggles, and nobody's into any of this. [And he goes], 'We don't stop for anything! Goddammit, this is the last take. I don't care what the hell we get.'" After a long, late-night shoot, they were supposed to get into the car and pull out of the garage, but when Michael turned the key in the ignition, the car — which Larry called a "pile of junk" — wouldn't start. Michael said, "When that car didn't start, I knew instantly we had a blow... It was perfect, and we all felt like the show was blessed." Jennifer Coolidge lied to get her role as Jerry's girlfriend on "The Masseuse." She told GQ, "It was a weird day. I booked Seinfeld the same day that I booked this very short-lived series called She TV, which was an all-women sketch show on ABC. I didn't really have any jobs before that. I only had lies on my resume. I'd gone to a school called American Academy of Dramatic Arts up in Pasadena, and I'd just named all these shows and all these different theaters at the school as if they played there. You have to do that if you have a blank resume until you start getting jobs. Then you can slowly erase the lies. I'd love to get my hands on that resume now." However, the role was a big boon for her career. She said, "After my episode aired, all these people, all these casting directors that would never let me through the doorwell, it kind of changed a lot for me. Seinfeld and American Pie really opened the doors. Years later, I was up for a pilot, and it was between me and another girl, and I think they were leaning toward the other girl. But then the producer told me a rerun of my Seinfeld episode had aired that night, and everyone had seen it, and it had gotten me the job." The main cast wasn't always great to work with. Sarah Silverman had a terrible time guest-starring on "The Money." On a 2021 episode of her podcast, she said, "I was in an episode of Seinfeld. I was Kramer's girlfriend, and I will tell you this: Everyone was really nice, but I had a bad experience with Michael Richards. The first scene I shot, I'm in bed with Kramer, and he's scared because he hears noises. He says something like, 'What was that noise?' Then my line is, 'It's probably the wind.'" However, she flubbed her line and said, "It's probably the rain." Sarah continued, "This guy, Michael Richards, breaks character and just starts ripping me a new asshole... He points to the window and he goes, 'Do you see rain in that window? Do you see rain in that window?' and I go, 'No,' and he says, 'Then why did you say rain? It's not rain. There's no rain in that window! The line is wind!" She felt a "lump in [her] throat" and was upset he got away with treating her that way. The next day, while shooting a diner scene, he acted polite and tried to talk to her. She recalled, "And finally, I just cut him off, and I say, 'I don't give a fuck!'... And he's kind of stunned, and it's like he snapped out of it a little. He understood what I was saying was, 'You don't talk like that and act like nothing happened. I'm not going to be one of those people that joins in and acts like nothing happened. That was shitty behavior." Afterwards, he was more gracious. Guest star Armin Shimerman "hated" the Seinfeld cast. At the 2017 Florida Supercon, he said, "Hated them. They were non-communicative, ugly, I was the guest star. The episode's called 'The Caddy.' I played a caddy. I played the caddy. I was on that show for six days, five days. Every day, nobody said a word to me except cues. Nobody came up and started a conversation. I was already on Deep Space Nine. I was a series regular on a... TV show. That's not acceptable... If you have a guest star, if you have a day player, if you have an extra, you do not avoid them. You speak to them. We're all human beings together... And those four people on Seinfeld never said boo to me." He also alleged that, once, when the gaffers had to redo the lighting, he was sitting between Jerry and Julia while they waited for half an hour. They talked to each other the entire time, never once acknowledging him. He said, "It was as though I wasn't there. So, I'm not very fond of them." On The Skinny Confidential, Kathy Griffin said, "I had never met [Jerry] until I was on the show, and he was such a dick that I then went and told a story about him in my special. He actually, to his credit, thought it was funny. He didn't clutch his pearls and go, 'How dare you? I'm a star!' So they wrote the second episode where my character becomes a stand-up comic whose whole act is making fun of Jerry Seinfeld. And that was amazing." Heidi Swedberg's character Susan was killed off because the rest of the cast thought she was "impossible" to play off of. On the Howard Stern Show, Jason Alexander said, "Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring... Julia actually said, 'Don't you want to just kill her?' And Larry went, 'Ka-bang!'" However, Jason later apologized for how he told that story, tweeting, "OK, folks, I feel officially awful. The impetus for telling this story was that Howard said, 'Julia Louis-Dreyfus told me you all wanted to kill her.' So I told the story to try and clarify that no one wanted to kill Heidi... [She] was generous and gracious, and I am so mad at myself for retelling this story in any way that would diminish her. If I had had more maturity or more security in my own work, I surely would have taken her query and possibly tried to adjust the scenes with her. She surely offered. But, I didn't have that maturity or security." Lawrence Tierney, who played Elaine's father on one episode, was never brought back because the rest of the cast found him intimidating and scary. In a Season 2 DVD extra, Julia said, "It's too bad he was so cuckoo because I'm sure he would've been back otherwise." Jason said, "There was every reason in the world to have that be an ongoing character because there was just so much tension between him and every other character. It was brilliant." However, the cast went on to describe an incident where Lawrence allegedly stole one of Jerry's knives from the set and hid it in his jacket. After Jerry called him out on it, Lawrence tried to make a joke then pulled the knife out, made the Psycho sound, and advanced on Jerry a bit. Jason added, "Lawrence Tierney, I think, scared the living crap out of all of us." On her podcast Wiser Than Me, Julia revealed one of the strangest places a Seinfeld fan has ever recognized her — the maternity ward! She said, "I was giving birth, and, when you're in labor, they put that monitor around your tummy. And I was in the bathroom, and I was naked, and I had the thing around my tummy, and I was massive, by the way. I gained like 50 pounds when I was pregnant. And I was standing there, and my water broke, and all of a sudden a nurse came into the room, and I went, 'My water broke!' Okay, reminding you [I'm] naked. And she goes, 'Elaine!' ...It was so awful. Isn't that crazy?" To Jerry, the funniest moment they ever filmed was when George saved a whale by pulling Kramer's lost golfball out of its blowhole "The Marine Biologist." At the 2017 New Yorker Festival, Jerry said, "The hardest thing in comedy is to have the biggest laugh at the end, and it's the most satisfying thing... We got very lucky. Larry and I came up with it the night before we were shooting. We wrote it late at night, and Jason memorized the whole speech in one day." "The Revenge" was partially based on Larry's experience quitting his job as a writer for Saturday Night Live — and the immediate regret that followed. On The David Letterman Show, Larry said, "I decided, that's it. They're fooling with the wrong guy. I walked up to the producer, it was like five minutes before the show was about to begin, I walked up and I said, 'That's it. I'm done! I've had it! Take your show! Shove it." However, his real-life neighbor, Kevin Kramer, advised him, "Why don't you just go back on Monday and pretend it never happened?" So, that's exactly what Larry did. "The Junior Mint" was not an instance of paid product placement. Andy Robin, who wrote the episode, told the Hollywood Reporter, "I knew I wanted Kramer to think of watching the operation like going to see a movie. At first, I thought maybe a piece of popcorn falls into the patient. I ran that by my brother, and he said, 'No, Junior Mints are just funnier.'" Julia came up with Elaine's iconic terrible dancing from "The Little Kicks" herself. She told Vanity Fair, "The night before the table read, I had the script, and frankly, I just stood in front of a mirror and tried to do movements that looked incredibly bad. I had a few of them, and I remember my mom was staying with us at the time, and I came downstairs, and I sort of auditioned these different movements for my mom and my husband — and they all voted on the one that I did." In an essay for Parade, writer Peter Mehlman explained that the sheer amount of Superman references wasn't planned. He said, "Much like the infant who fell from the sky into small-town America, Superman simply dropped into the orbit of Seinfeld. Contrary to rumor, it was never planned to make the Man of Steel a recurring theme, and the writing staff, on which I worked for six seasons, never got an edict dictating regular mentions of him. He just magically appeared early in the series and evolved into a go-to guy for humor — another superpower for a being faster than a speeding bullet." "That happy accident made it doubly amazing that, in the hopelessly earthbound, self-absorbed, conniving world of Seinfeld, Superman was not merely a comic-book hero — he was a role model. Great Caesar's Ghost … so much comedy gold arose from that berserk dynamic. Just consider: Superman was devoted to truth, justice, and the American way:" the Seinfeld characters were devoted to lying, cheating, and getting their own way," he said. "The Bizarro Jerry" was born from writer David Mandel and Jerry's shared love of Superman. David told Cracked, "When I pitched the concept of the Bizarro Jerry, Jerry was all over it. He knew what it was and loved it and he saw why that would be funny. I always give him credit because he was the one to say 'take it further.' It's because of Jerry that there's that ending scene of the show where they actually talk in Bizarro-speak. That was Jerry saying, 'Go for it.' That happened a lot in those final two seasons, Jerry encouraged the writers to go further." In the same episode, the "Man Hands" storyline was "loosely" inspired by David's wife. He told Cracked, "She has entirely normal-sized hands, but she grew up on a farm, and she always said her hands were 'farmy,' so that story grew out of that." Julia was able to bring her kids to work. Guest star Jami Gertz told GQ, "[She] had just had a baby, and she had a little nursery on set. So I brought my son, and our kids were able to play together on set." Originally, the show was reportedly titled The Seinfeld Chronicles. However, it had to change its name because of The Marshall Chronicles, another sitcom that was airing at the time. Production designer Thomas Azzari told the Santa Fe New Mexican, "My philosophy is that you should never be aware of the sets. You want to make sure they're appropriate, but you don't want to take anything away from what's going on. That's why Jerry's apartment is gray. … The color is the actors." By Season 9, the show was reportedly "the most expensive sitcom to produce in TV history." Each episode cost $3-3.5 million to make, and Jerry was paid $1 million per episode! The show made an estimated $1.1 billion in revenue in just the second round of syndication. After filming ended for the final season, Jerry took home a pretty big piece of memorabilia — his apartment's front wall! The rest of the set went into storage at Warner Bros. The Season 9 episode "The Puerto Rican Day" was pulled after criticism from the National Puerto Rican Coalition, who called out the show for — among other depictions of harmful stereotypes — joking that rioting and vandalizing were part of "everyday" in Puerto Rico. The scene where Kramer accidentally catches a Puerto Rican flag on fire was particularly called into question. Manuel Mirabal, president of the National Puerto Rican Coalition, told the New York Times, "It is unacceptable that the Puerto Rican flag be used by 'Seinfeld' as a stage prop under any circumstances." In a statement, NBC said, "We do not feel that the show lends itself to damaging ethnic stereotypes, because the audience for Seinfeld knows the humor is derived from watching the core group of characters get themselves into difficult situations." However, the episode was put back on air in 2002. In hindsight, Jerry would "absolutely" like to redo a few episodes differently. In 2021, he told People, "There's a number of them that I would love to have a crack at, but I don't really believe, philosophically, in changing or even thinking about the past. My philosophy of life is that just happened the way it happened, and we're going to go from here. And that's the best way to ... live. I think regret is a philosophical position that I disagree with. It kind of assumes you could have changed the past, so I wouldn't even think of that. But if you forced me or you gave me a time machine, yeah, there's a few [where] I would fix some things." One episode Jerry might like to change — the controversial finale. At the 2017 New Yorker Festival, he said, "I sometimes think we really shouldn't have even done it. There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy." The poor audience reactions to the finale changed the way Larry approached TV. He told Grantland, "Well, you know, I got so much grief from the Seinfeld finale, which a lot of people intensely disliked, that I no longer feel a need to wrap things up... I wouldn't say I'm mad about it, but it taught me a lesson that if I ever did another show, I wasn't going to wrap it up." However, he stood by the episode, saying, "No, I was not interested in an emotional ride, and neither was Jerry. No wonder why they would dislike it, yeah. But let me toot my own horn for a second. I thought it was clever to bring back all those characters in a courtroom and testify against them for what they did, and then show those clips, and also for why they even got arrested in the first place. And then to wind up — forget the self-aggrandizement here... I thought it was clever." And finally, ending the show was a mutual decision among the four leads. Jerry told People, "I do remember when I was in the ninth season, and I was thinking, maybe it's time to wrap this up. I remember inviting Michael and Julia and Jason to my dressing room, and we all just sat there and we stared at each other. And I went, 'You know, I was thinking maybe this is our moment to make a good exit. We've had a lot of good fortune here. Maybe we shouldn't push our luck too far.' And we all agreed that this was the right moment." Do you love all things TV and movies? Subscribe to the Screen Time newsletter to get your weekly dose of what to watch next and what everyone is flailing over from someone who watches everything!
Newsweek
14 hours ago
- Newsweek
Almost 20 Years After Katrina, a Filmmaker Visited New Orleans. Everyone Told Her the Same Thing.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A visitor in New Orleans might frolic around the French Quarter, revel in Mardi Gras culture or get lost in a blues performance. When trying to track down the tastiest jumbo, it is easy to forget the trauma that meanders the Mississippi. But for residents, there is no getting away from the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, which still haunts the city two decades on. Filmmaker Traci A. Curry visited Essence Festival in 2023, a behemoth of Black American culture hosted annually in the city. She soon uncovered a startling truth, uttered by pretty much everyone in New Orleans—from Uber drivers to bartenders. "What was interesting was that all of them said some version of the same thing, which was that for those of us who come to New Orleans as visitors, it looks and feels as the New Orleans we all know. The one of our imagination. It's the Mardi Gras, it's the drinking, it's the food, it's the music. "But for us, they describe this bifurcated experience of the city—of before Katrina and after Katrina, that continues to this day," Curry told Newsweek in an interview at the London pre-screening of the upcoming five-part documentary Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time, premiering July 27 on National Geographic and streaming July 28 on Disney+ and Hulu. Anthony Andrews and Traci A. Curry during a Q&A event at the London pre-screening of "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time". Anthony Andrews and Traci A. Curry during a Q&A event at the London pre-screening of "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time". Lydia Patrick/Lydia Patrick It soon became clear to her that the city's recovery is somewhat surface-level. Curry's series—a five-part documentary—peels back the veneer of post‑Katrina New Orleans to reveal the lingering scars. A Man-Made Disaster Most Americans remember the mayhem when Katrina made landfall off Louisiana on August 29, 2005. Broadcasts aired stampedes of people trapped in the Superdome, overhead footage of submerged streets, and looted grocery stores. Now, the storm is memorialized as a "man‑made" disaster, noting the failure of the emergency response and the maintenance of the aging levee system that was supposed to protect the low‑lying neighborhoods from being utterly deluged. Curry told Newsweek: "So many of the things that happened during Katrina and the story that we tell were not things created by the storm. They were things that were revealed and exacerbated by the storm," noting how it disproportionately impacted poorer Black communities. A mandatory evacuation order was put in place; tens of thousands of the city's 480,000 residents fled, but more than 100,000 remained trapped. Many made their way to the Superdome, which descended into unbridled chaos as survivors were left without means to survive. Stranded New Orleans residents gather underneath the interstate following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Stranded New Orleans residents gather underneath the interstate following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. KTVT - TV/KTVT - TV "When you're talking about class and race and, you know, all these things—so much of the reason that there were so many people left behind is because they could not afford to just because you are working class and don't have money, you are more likely to perish during Katrina," Curry added. A crowd of stranded New Orleans residents are gathered outside of the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A crowd of stranded New Orleans residents are gathered outside of the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. ABC News/ABC News The Personal Stories Curry and her team sifted through hundreds of hours of footage to reframe the narrative of Katrina with humanity. Curry explained during a post‑screening Q&A hosted by Anthony Andrews, co-founder of arts company We Are Parable: "I used to be a news producer, and I understand how it goes. If you're on a deadline, you get your shot and go. If you run the same footage of one guy taking the TV over and over, that becomes the story." But she believes something more nefarious took place, too: dangerous stereotypes against Black people were perpetuated, dehumanizing victims of the unfolding tragedy. "There's a pre‑existing narrative about Black people in the U.S.—violence and pathology—that the media can easily lean into. News cycles don't incentivize a nuanced human story," she said. A military helicopter arrives to rescue stranded New Orleans residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. A military helicopter arrives to rescue stranded New Orleans residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. John Keller/John Keller The Oscar-nominated director counteracted this with personal and individualized footage. "You can either look at footage, look through hundreds of hours and see like shirtless Black men running crazy and say like, 'That's a criminal,' or you say 'that's a human being that's trying to survive' and allow that to inform the storytelling, which is what I and the team did," she explained. "You as the audience member must look into the eyes of the human being." Personal stories include that of Lucrece, a mother trapped in her attic with her children. Her daughter wrote their names on the walls, believing they were going to die. They were rescued by boat, but had to confront her haunting reality, a submerged city. Lucrece Phillips, resident of the 8th Ward at the time of Hurricane Katrina, who shared her harrowing rescue story in the documentary series. Lucrece Phillips, resident of the 8th Ward at the time of Hurricane Katrina, who shared her harrowing rescue story in the documentary series. Disney/National Geographic/Disney/National Geographic "There's a point at which she sees the body of a dead baby in the water. She says, 'Stop the boat, we have to get her.' The man goes, 'We have to focus on the living,'" Curry recalled. Lessons Learned? Fast‑forward 20 years and New Orleans is a city forever etched by disaster. The Lower Ninth Ward was completely decimated by Katrina, and today the area once populated by working‑class Black residents remains largely vacant. "It looks like it just happened," Curry said. "There's footage in the fifth episode we shot last year: block after block of concrete steps leading nowhere—houses that no longer exist. That neighborhood has never recovered." Meanwhile, gentrification has "turbo‑charged" the displacement of the original community, as rising housing costs transform shotgun doubles into Airbnbs with skyrocketing rents. Natural disasters are still having devastating effects. Before production wrapped, Hurricane Helene made landfall in September 2025, causing extreme flooding in Asheville, North Carolina. Crushed vehicles and storm debris sit along the Swannanoa River in a landscape scarred by Hurricane Helene on March 24, 2025, in Asheville, North Carolina. Crushed vehicles and storm debris sit along the Swannanoa River in a landscape scarred by Hurricane Helene on March 24, 2025, in Asheville, North Carolina. AFP/Getty Images "There were different weather events—the fires in Hawaii and Los Angeles. All very different. Katrina was singular in many ways, but we've seen the same contours: a weather event exacerbated by man‑made environmental impacts, an infrastructure unfit to sustain it, and harm that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable. As severe weather worsens with climate change, this will only continue unless we center the needs of the most vulnerable before the storm," Curry warned. Curry added that, while Katrina's impact is New Orleans‑centric, similar inequalities plague other communities—like the predominantly Black "Cancer Alley" upriver, where higher-than-average cancer rates have been blamed on factory pollution, or neighborhoods saddled with heat‑intensive data "server farms" and tainted water. "Katrina's story just has so much to teach us about related issues that are continuing to happen today. I hope people wake up," she added. Highlighting this point is footage of President George W. Bush flying over the apocalyptic scenes of New Orleans. The series cuts in near‑identical footage from 1965's Hurricane Betsy—when the Lower Ninth Ward was submerged similarly—yet that time President Lyndon Johnson came immediately, and emergency operations began at once. Curry notes that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose response was heavily criticized, has since learned from Katrina and adjusted policies to better serve those most vulnerable before a storm. But today the agency faces significant financial cuts, and its survival hangs in the balance as political pressures threaten to dismantle the system altogether. Yet the bigger story Curry wants to tell—decades on from disaster—is one of community. "Even in the most inhumane conditions, when all of these systems had failed and civil society broke down, these people did not lose their humanity. They held onto it, expressed it through care for one another, and used whatever agency they had to maintain the tight bonds of kinship and community that characterize New Orleans."
