Bill Burr was in the middle of a standup set in the original room at The Comedy Cellar when his cell phone rang: It was Jerry Seinfeld. What do you do? Burr answered.
Seinfeld wanted Burr to play JFK in his Pop-Tarts (fake) origin story, “Unfrosted.” Burr immediately accepted the role — and then went back to telling jokes to the paying customers.
It was the fastest (and the most public) “yes” that Seinfeld and his writing partner Spike Feresten say they got from a tremendous ensemble comedy cast that includes Seinfeld himself, as well as Jim Gaffigan, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Poehler, Hugh Grant, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, James Marsden, Jack McBrayer— there’s honestly just too many to list. That wasn’t always the case.
“There was a long time where we didn’t have anybody to make this movie. We had the budget, we had the script, but we didn’t have any people to play the parts,” Seinfeld told IndieWire. “That was one of the most terrifying moments. We would go into this little room that we had with each part on a 3×5 card on the wall. And we had Gaffigan as Kellogg — and that was it. And there were like 30 parts.”
So Seinfeld and Feresten filled them in with names, one by one.
Seinfeld continued, “I remember asking Ronny Chieng if he would do one line. And he was thrilled. He said, ‘Yeah! I’ll get on a plane, I’ll come out — I would love to do it!’ And I could not understand it. But having seen it in the movie, I could see— oh, it’s fun just to be in it because it’s funny, it’s silly.”
Hugh Grant had quite a bit more than one line, and he jumped through some hoops to land the coveted(?) role of Tony the Tiger. Whether or not he had to depends on whom you ask. Grant sent in a homemade iPhone audition.
“He had a glass of wine in his hand and he was on the couch,” Feresten told IndieWire. “We were just stunned on how homemade his audition was — and how good it was.”
Seinfeld agrees it was very good, but has no idea who said the actor had to audition. “Here’s Hugh Grant at 8 o’clock at night before he goes to bed, crushing the lines. Crushing,” Feresten continued. “That’s when we said, ‘Jerry, close this for us. Get this guy.’”
Jerry got the guy, who is truly grrreat! in the role. And then “somehow,” Seinfeld said, “a lot of other people started falling in after that.”
It helped that not everyone had to have Grant’s acting pedigree. “Luckily, acting was very low on our list of job requirements to be in this movie,” Seinfeld said. “Basically it was, ‘Could you get here on this day?’ was what we cared about.”
And when you do get there, stick to the script, will ya?
“I don’t like improvising, myself. Actors sometimes like it,” Seinfeld said. “But the first thing we’ve got to get accomplished on the set every day is what we wrote. And then after that we fooled around a little bit.”
The “Unfrosted” set wasn’t frosty — these are Jerry Seinfeld’s words we’re talking about, put some respect on them — but it does sound like the antithesis of his “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” approach. (Seinfeld appeared on “Curb” quite a few times, including in the recent series finale, a send-up of the duo’s “Seinfeld” finale.)
Still, who “fooled around” best? Kyle Dunnigan as the unhappily married newsman Walter Cronkite did “an amazing job improvising,” Seinfeld said, making up each bit of the serious anchor’s (fake) “dysfunctional domestic life” on the spot.
Burr didn’t do a ton of improv; at first, he didn’t get the tone Seinfeld was going for. “It [felt] like when we built the Oval Office, Bill was approaching JFK very seriously at the very start of the scenes, until [Seinfeld] directed him otherwise,” Feresten said.
To be fair to Burr, in addition the the comedy, he’s created a nice little dramatic acting career for himself, including recurring roles on “Breaking Bad” and “The Mandalorian.” One simple note from the GOAT got Seinfeld and Feresten exactly what they needed.
“He tried to be JFK, I said ‘just be Funny Bill Burr — with the accent,” Seinfeld said.
Another perfect casting.
“Unfrosted” starts streaming Friday, May 3 on Netflix.
