Jason Alexander

Summary

You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes

Guest: Jason Alexander

Release Date: September 7, 2022

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Episode Overview

This episode features Pete Holmes in conversation with iconic actor and comedian Jason Alexander. The two delve deeply into topics of celebrity, service, anxiety, authenticity, acting craft, spirituality, and personal growth. Alexander brings warmth and candor, sharing stories from his career, lessons learned through therapy, and philosophical reflections on art and life. The tone is self-deprecating, deeply human, and sprinkled with both hilarious and poignant moments. The focus remains on Alexander’s personal weirdness, emotional journey, and outlook, offering a rich portrait of the man behind George Costanza.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Nature of Celebrity & Service (15:53-20:31)

• Alexander’s Unanticipated Life: He discusses how he set out just to be a stage actor, not a celebrity.

  “I do not live a life that I anticipated in any way.” – Jason Alexander (15:59)

• Parental Influence & Service: His mother emphasized the value of a life in service, which he thought he was missing as an actor.
• Audience Impact: He frequently hears from people who found comfort in Seinfeld during hard times.

  “Honestly, you guys saved my life... Well, maybe I stumbled into a life of service.” – Jason Alexander (18:30)

• Reframing Service: Service does not have to be martyrdom or suffering.

  “Service, when it is in line with what you love doing anyway, that’s a beautiful symbiotic [thing].” – Pete Holmes (19:37)

2. Anxiety, Ego, and the Power of Attention (20:31-28:12)

• Panic Attacks on Broadway: Alexander recounts debilitating anxiety while performing in Broadway Bound.

  “Every part of my being is going, you gotta get off. Get off the stage.” – Jason Alexander (22:35)

• The Lesson from Larry Moss: His acting coach bluntly diagnoses:

  “You’re an egomaniac... It’s all about you. Nobody gives a about you, Jason. They want to see the story.” – Larry Moss via Jason Alexander (27:17)

• The Shift to Outward Focus: Shifting attention from self to serving one’s partner and the story dissolved the anxiety—a lesson for happiness and acting.

3. Philosophy of Awards, Community, and Theater (28:12-34:07)

• Awards vs. The Work: Alexander discusses never winning an Emmy for Seinfeld and what truly matters.

  “The award, honestly, was the job…” – Jason Alexander (30:14)

• Value of Community: He loves the communal nature of theater and collaborative creation—drawing parallels to human tribal needs.

  “There’s something about these pack animals that we are that love showing up, and everyone agrees this is what we’re doing.” – Pete Holmes (31:00)

4. Teaching, Directing, and Joy of Giving Back (33:03-36:04)

• Alexander as Teacher: Finds deep satisfaction and meaning in teaching and watching his students surpass his own accomplishments.

  “To help somebody up on your shoulder. That’s a cool, cool feeling… Go, go, go. Leave me in the dust. That’s fine.” – Jason Alexander (35:09)

• Service through Teaching: More than just a mechanical act, it is imbued with selfish joy and genuine service.

5. Money, Success, and a Working-Class Perspective (36:09-40:00)

• Relationship to Wealth: Despite financial security, Alexander remains frugal and invests most in experiences and his children's education rather than luxury.

  “We don’t spend on luxury things. Where we have spent our money is on our kids’ education… buying time with people we care about and having adventures.” – Jason Alexander (38:56)

• Therapy and Self-Acceptance: It took decades for Alexander to confront his fears, ego, and the deeper work of personal growth.

6. Authenticity, Ego, and Growth (41:05-48:47)

• Therapy Insights: Discusses overcoming ego-driven behaviors, people-pleasing, and craving validation.

  “I was hiding in plain sight... I didn’t love being in my skin.” – Jason Alexander (42:41)

• Process, Not Perfection: Emphasizes that the journey of self-acceptance and growth is ongoing.

7. The Art of Vulnerability and Comedy (51:29-55:56)

• What Makes Good Art: Using the stage—not to assert dominance, but to display vulnerability, weirdness, and insecurity.

  “Here’s my, here’s my foibles. Here’s my, that’s what Larry is so good at... I am the lord of the idiots.” – Jason Alexander (53:38)

• Boston/Jersey Ball Busting vs. Vulnerability: The hosts compare regional comedic styles. They both land on opening up as the key to real connection and laughs.

8. Mortality, Authenticity, and Permission to Be Yourself (57:05-62:17)

• Act Three of Life and Authenticity: Alexander’s self-work intensifies turning 60, seeking to “authentically be who I am.”
• Morning/Evening Mindset Hacks: Both share life-changing gratitude practices, inspired by Sadhguru and a Buddhist monk:
  • On waking: “A million people did not wake up today. You did.” – via Sadhguru (61:33)
  • On sleeping: “Replay all the things you did well that day… Go to bed in a sea of merit.” – Pete Holmes (63:55)

9. Physicality, Intention, and Acting Technique (80:45-88:52)

• Acting as Service: Emphasis on serving your scene partner above yourself.
• Physicality’s Role: Most actors underuse their bodies; intention should be visible through action, not just emotion or words.

  “The job—actions—that’s what we bring. That’s what’s not on the page.” – Jason Alexander (83:43)

• On Crying and Authenticity in Performance: Real tears aren’t the goal—affecting your partner/connections is.

10. Spirituality, Death, and The Afterlife (119:03-128:45)

• Open Approach to Meaning: Not religious, but not materialist; Alexander believes in a creative source, the conservation of energy after death, and a purpose behind existence.

  “I have trouble getting away from the notion of a creator. I don’t know if it’s sentient. I don’t know that it’s living in the way we think of living... I think the universe was created for purpose, and we are part of the exploration of that purpose.” – Jason Alexander (126:29)

• Through Line of Outwardness: Service, outward attention, and community are recurring elements in both his daily life and worldview.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Real Impact

  “Honestly, you guys saved my life... Well, maybe I stumbled into a life of service.”
  — Jason Alexander (18:46)

• On Therapy and Working on Yourself

  “You don't think much of yourself right now. You're in one of the top 5% of people in the world. Because you give a shit. And you're looking at it, and it's scary, and it's dark, and you don't like what you see in the mirror, and you're still looking in the mirror and you're still working on it.”
  — Jason Alexander (44:12)

• On Awards

  “The statue, I'll give you every statue in the world. You give me all that other stuff [the experience, colleagues, opportunities].”
  — Jason Alexander (30:41)

• On Panic Attacks and Ego

  “You’re an egomaniac. It’s all about you. Nobody gives a shit about you, Jason. They want to see the story.”
  — (Larry Moss via Jason Alexander, 27:17)

• On Generosity as Joy

  "To help somebody up on your shoulder. That’s a cool, cool feeling.”
  — Jason Alexander (35:09)

• On Spirituality

  “You cannot create or destroy energy, you can only change it. So I look at that and I go, well—what did that energy become? ...Having seen that, I tend to feel like whatever that is has soul connection on it.”
  — Jason Alexander (125:20)

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Memorable Stories

• Seinfeld Set Stories:
  • Endless Block in the Parking Garage (143:03-149:47): Filming the “Parking Garage” episode, the cast became uncontrollably punchy and exhausted, laughing so hard during the trunk scene that Julia Louis-Dreyfus teared up, Michael Richards smashed his face on the air conditioner, and the car wouldn’t start—synergy, kismet, joy.

    “It’s not funny, Elaine. I hurt myself.” – (Michael Richards as Kramer, cut from final episode; 148:52)

• The Psychic Recommending a Fertility Doctor (116:57-118:46): Recounts a psychic naming, almost word-for-word, the fertility doctor who would finally help him become a father.
• Ghost Story in Montreal (109:33-113:35): While filming, the family experiences classic ghost phenomena—perfume scents, whispering in French, a nanny being pushed and attacked—which led them to evacuate the house.

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Other Noteworthy Segments

• On EMF Sensitivity (101:29-104:51): Jason describes his and his wife's concern over electromagnetic fields, moving beds, wearing EMF-blocking undershirts, and the general surreality of modern anxiety.
• On Never Using Drugs or Alcohol (78:53-79:07): “I am the most boring man on the planet... I’ve never been drunk, I’ve never been high.”
• Acting Craft & Tools (83:57-88:52):
  • Recommends ‘Actions for Actors’ as a thesaurus for physical intentions and advocates for actors to physically inhabit their objectives.
  • Uses exercises such as performing entire scenes in gesture only, to reveal and reinforce intention.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Celebrity Life & Service: 15:53–20:31
• Broadway Panic Attack Story: 20:50–28:12
• Meaning of Awards: 28:12–34:07
• Teaching and Giving Back: 33:29–36:04
• Money & Values: 36:09–40:00
• Self-Acceptance and Therapy: 41:05–48:47
• Comedy from Vulnerability: 51:29–55:56
• Spiritual Practices for Gratitude: 61:21–64:38
• Acting Technique, Physicality: 80:45–88:52
• Spirituality and Afterlife: 119:03–128:45
• Real-Life Ghost Story: 109:33–113:35
• Laughing Fit on Seinfeld Set: 143:03–149:47

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Tone and Language

The episode is warm, candid, and alternates seamlessly between humor, self-deprecation, emotional honesty, and philosophical depth. Both Holmes and Alexander are comfortable naming their neuroses and laughing about them, modeling vulnerability as strength. Jason Alexander’s stories are marked by humility, comedic timing, and a desire to serve both audience and fellow artists.

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Conclusion

This episode is a masterclass in vulnerability, acting philosophy, and the myth of celebrity happiness. Alexander pulls back the curtain on both the joy and the struggle of a life in the arts, grounding his reflections in service, authenticity, community, and self-discovery. The conversation is a must-listen for fans of comedy, theater, or anyone grappling with ego, meaning, or purpose.

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Closing:

“Keep it crispy. It’s how we end. And that’s it... I really mean it. You’re serious. Orange juice.”
— Jason Alexander (150:26–150:39)

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Transcript

[Jason Alexander]

You made it with. You made it with. You made it with. Oh, yeah, you made it with.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it weird with Pete Holmes. What's happening, weirdos? This. I can't believe it. This is Jason Alexander the Great. Jason Alexander and Alexander the Great. Well, there it was in front of us the whole time. So thrilled that I got to sit down with this remarkable human being. I'm so glad you guys are here to check it out. As I always say, let's get to it as quickly as possible. Just a couple quick plugs, including my new tour. Here's the art. There's the art. Pete Holmes, the Where Were we tour. We're going to be launching this art soon. I'm going to be in Toronto, Atlantic City, New Jersey, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Washington, D.C. that's just the beginning. Hopefully by the time this is live, tickets will [e-mail] I'm pretty sure they will be. So go to peteholmes.com for tickets or if you're in the Los Angeles area, go to largo-la.com I do a monthly show at Largo. Always the highlight of my month. Please come to that. So, so, so, so fun. Dimitri Martin did it recently. Amy Schumer, Rory Scoville, John Mulaney, Judd Apatow. Incredible musical guests as well. So hope you can make that. The Next one is September 8th, but if you're in any of those cities, Toronto, Atlantic City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Atlanta, Charlotte, or Washington, D.C. hope to see you for the Where Were we tour. Shaboom. I'm holding it up for the YouTube, for the YouTube people, for the audio people. You can see it on my Instagram or just live in mystery. Wondering what the. What the tour art looks like. But go to peteholmes.com for tickets. And guys, as you know, the show is supported by the Pete's Picks. I'm super excited, you guys. We have a new Pete's pick on this episode. And run, do not walk to check this one out. This app is brought to us by our friends at Brain fm. Brain FM has been a part of my daily creative routine for years now, and I'm so happy to be partnering with them. Every morning I sit down at my computer, throw on my headphones. These headphones hit focus, hit creative flow and boom. I'm in the pocket, ready to work, create, and focus. Without it, I find it so much harder to complete tasks. I procrastinate. I. I have a hard time meeting deadlines, even if they're my own self imposed deadlines for my own good. But with Brain FM I am signaling to my brain literally that it is time to get things done. And it works. So what is it? On the surface, Brain FM seems like an app that gives you the perfect background music for creative work, study, reading, meditation, relaxation and sleep. And that is true. It is incredible music to work or read or meditate to. But under the surface it is doing so much more than that. Brain FM's composers will work hard to create amazing sounding music that doesn't distract and uses their patented audio technology to boost your mental state on demand. Brain FM's scientists and composers, they add patterns to their music that change the patterns in your brain, creating increased blood flow and electrical connectivity activity in the brain and increasing focus in as little as five minutes. Regular music think about it is designed to be distracting. It wants your attention so you're constantly interrupted you using regular stuff to skip you have to skip and it pulls you out of that flow that you're trying to get into. So skip the skipping. With Brain FM you can get a wide variety of sounds and genres from natural soundscapes to lo fi electronic music that get you in the zone almost immediately without having to pick the perfect playlist. And it's science backed. Brain FM actually has the scientific research to back up their claims through close collaboration with neuroscientists and a wide array of field experiments and testing. But even better, their music is made by real composers, not computers and and but in instead multi instrument instrumentalist composers. That way the soundscapes on Brain FM still have the warmth of real people. So check it out. Support the show, support your brain, support your creativity, your goals and and and procrastination. Go to Brain FM/weird to get 30% off 30% off your first year of Brain FM and start getting more done with less effort and unlock your best self on demand. Experience the difference that the right music can make in your life. Go to brain fm weird for 30% off we're also brought to us by our friends. My new favorite best looking best feeling shorts I've ever owned. Bird dogs. I've never been a big short guy, that is true. And it turns out I was rocking the wrong shorts. Even though I love swimming. I also hate swim trunks, but bird dogs change both of those categories for me. Especially now that it's summer. I love liberating my legs and getting in water as often as possible and now thanks to my dogs I can get and do that while feeling totally comfortable and looking really good Bird dogs make you look good. Bird dogs have stretch khaki shorts designed for a fit slimmer through the thigh and leg, giving you a truly sculpted look, which I love.

[Jason Alexander]

And.

[Pete Holmes]

And bird dog shorts do the exact same thing as Lululemon, but fit way better. And honestly, you know, they look better. And it's not Lululemon. They're not stiff, restricting cotton. Birddogs fix this issue by inventing cloud knit fabric that looks just like khaki but stretches so you get a way slimmer fit without having to sacrifice movement. And Birddogs uses anti stink anti sweat, like sweat wicking fabric that keeps you cool and dry all day long. So go to bird dogs.com weird and you get a free yeti style tumbler with your order. I use this tumbler almost every day. I love it. That's bird dogs.com weird. For a free yeti style Tumblr. You won't want to take your bird Dogs off. We promise you support your short look, support your bathing suit look, and support the show. Bird dogs.com weird. All right, everybody, enjoy. I can't. I still thank you to Michael Rosenbaum. We talk about him in the episode. He gave me the connection to Jason. So glad it happened. Thank you to Michael. Guys, get into it. This is the couch I bought. And feel free to get cozy. You're a theater man. We represent, you know. Oh, my God. I said when you came in, no short jokes. I won't have it. You're the guest of honor.

[Jason Alexander]

Come on, let me.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a good place to start. So you're okay getting on this couch and being comfy? A lot of people won't do that.

[Jason Alexander]

Really?

[Pete Holmes]

They resist.

[Jason Alexander]

How do you. How do you know the way to navigate?

[Pete Holmes]

How do you resist? Just get on it.

[Jason Alexander]

Liquid death Mountain water. What the hell is that?

[Pete Holmes]

You just give it a little turn. Liquid death Mountain water.

[Jason Alexander]

I really thought this was gonna be like, you know, some uber Red Bull product.

[Pete Holmes]

No, it does look like an energy drink that gives you a thin third of an erection, but it doesn't. It doesn't get you all the way.

[Jason Alexander]

Back, by the way. That's.

[Pete Holmes]

That's all we need. That's.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, I've been working with that for at least 15 years.

[Pete Holmes]

You mean 1/3 Alexander?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, that's what they call it, but.

[Pete Holmes]

That'S all you need.

[Jason Alexander]

33. Is he a sponsor? Is this a sponsor?

[Pete Holmes]

This is a sponsor.

[Jason Alexander]

They're gonna be thrilled. Let me do that. They're gonna be favor them. That's right. I do commercials.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, right? It's a fact of life. The liquid death's keeping the lights on. But, but I really have a question. First of all, what a thrill.

[Jason Alexander]

Stop it.

[Pete Holmes]

What a thrill. Again.

[Jason Alexander]

Finish your thought.

[Pete Holmes]

But it's, I know.

[Jason Alexander]

By the way, I have stolen that line.

[Pete Holmes]

Finish your thought.

[Jason Alexander]

I think it's, I think it was Jerry Seinfeld. I think that's the first time I heard it. And I don't know if he appropriated from somebody, but it's such a great. Somebody would say something nice about him and he'd go, please, it's too much. Stop. You're embarrassed. Finish your thought. I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure it was Jerry.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very good. I, I wouldn't, nor I wasn't planning on bringing this up, let's say that. But when I met Jerry, it was like an episode of Seinfeld in that or Curb, you know, very similar shows. But like, I, he complimented something I had done. And I went like this, I went.

[Jason Alexander]

I went like that. The old squeezy eye doll.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, yes. But I mean, I really did that. I literally went like. And I'm standing closer than we are. Like we're in a crowded little party thing. And I go. And I could tell, like the Oprah hands of the pilot. I blew it. Like, I, like, I wasn't really worried that I blew it, but I was like, I've gone too big.

[Jason Alexander]

Too big.

[Pete Holmes]

Same. When I met Larry David, I said, big fan. And he looked at me like, I swear to God, his face. If the subtitles were on. Don't say big fan. Wow, that's, that's what it, that's what it was. And then Flanny, who runs Largo, I don't know if you've ever been to Largo, a theater. We'll get you there. Great shows, awesome. That's where Larry was. And Flanny went, don't say big fan. Don't say big fan.

[Jason Alexander]

Really?

[Pete Holmes]

But he, they, he was sort of breaking my balls. But I, I, I didn't think it was sincere thought that, that Larry, it would have been okay.

[Jason Alexander]

I, I'm trying to think what I mean. Well, let me ask you. I haven't written the book on Larry David, but I, I, I can't imagine that he would find that to be. You haven't voted professionally and yeah, yeah, I, I, I carry a piece of him around that at all times.

[Pete Holmes]

But your blood type is your blood type.

[Jason Alexander]

But also, I'll take, I'll take whatever Larry is Yeah, right.

[Pete Holmes]

Take whatever Larry's is, which I think is like raw cashews and spring water.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm not sure whatever is keeping that man alive. Yeah, it's. It's phenomenal.

[Pete Holmes]

He's going for it.

[Jason Alexander]

He is. There's. He looks now the way he looked 30 years ago. I. And I don't know if that's good, bad, or different, but, I mean, it may have been he looked a little older than he should have back then, or he looks fantastic now.

[Pete Holmes]

But he.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. You know, he's certainly successful, and I. As close to happy as Larry's gonna get. So I think he's. He feels. He feels vibrant and alive, and I.

[Pete Holmes]

Always projected onto it that he was.

[Jason Alexander]

By the way, I have to do this because this looks like we're gonna go fly fishing later. What is happening?

[Pete Holmes]

Would you put it in your cap? The feather is also a sponsor.

[Jason Alexander]

This feather brought to you by liquid death. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Fruits don't have to die for them to be.

[Jason Alexander]

I don't think so. No, no, no, no, no. It's optional. Oh, no, you don't have to. Birds.

[Pete Holmes]

We're thinking they're like sheep.

[Jason Alexander]

No birdie's feathers. I promise you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. This is a woodsman.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We're taken from two men of the woods.

[Jason Alexander]

True. Five Maple, New Jersey. Boy Scout, right here.

[Pete Holmes]

I always thought it was that.

[Jason Alexander]

What.

[Pete Holmes]

When some people, when their number comes in in a big way, then they go like, well, I have one of the. I. I could. I have the potential to live one of the greatest lives of all time, so I should stop eating melted cheese constantly. Some people go the other way, and they're like, I'm going to eat melted cheese.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm the king, right?

[Pete Holmes]

You can't tell me.

[Jason Alexander]

Not stop me now.

[Pete Holmes]

But there are other examples other than Larry David. I'm trying to think, but none. None come to mind when they're really like. Like, I just saw Mark Marin in Montreal, and he's going, Larry David.

[Jason Alexander]

He's.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know what he's doing, but he looks vegan. Let's say that.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Larry, I don't think. Larry. Again, I'm not. I know I should be the aficionado on Larry David, but I don't think Larry changed it up in a big way. When successful. I. You know, he doesn't live in Manhattan Plaza apartment complex anymore in New York, but he's got some property. But I don't. You know, it's. It's. The people I think he hangs with have changed. Yeah, but I don't think his. His day to day tastes about stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

He was always kind of a healthy guy.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, you know, we used to do.

[Pete Holmes]

A thing so images of pizzas.

[Jason Alexander]

The only time we all kind of hung out, really. Yeah. Was after a taping. We go to the Jerry's Deli that used to be there on Ventura Boulevard, and. And we'd sort of do a debrief about the show. The writers and the core cast would go. And so I'm trying to think back. There was. There was a game that. That Jerry and I. And I remember maybe Larry Charles or some of the writers used to play about. We would order as if you were upping the ante at a poker game. You know, that may. You may get indigestion, but this order will kill me. And I remember Larry kind of participating in that. So I guess he was a bit of a. Of a cavalier eater, but.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I have to think. Okay, so we're only going to talk about you. This just happened to come up. I remember I was obsessed with Seinfeld when I was young because I grew up religious and he was clean. So I was very interested in him as a comedian. And then I would read, like, books and stuff about him and. And then it would say something like, at rap, everyone would smoke cigars. And I was like, Jerry. Like, I had this weird.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Almost Latter Day Saint protection of him. Whereas, like, Jerry.

[Jason Alexander]

Not my Jerry.

[Pete Holmes]

Not my Jerry, exactly. But that is true. That was a.

[Jason Alexander]

They used to go back. So Jerry and Larry shared it. You did not.

[Pete Holmes]

You didn't.

[Jason Alexander]

I was not a cigar smoker, much to my father's chagrin, because my father, on his deathbed, when he hadn't eaten for a month or had, you know, water to drink for a week, said, dad, can I get you anything? Kill for a cigar.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that true?

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, yeah. Did you give him one? He was in a room with oxygen. I mean, I wanted to. I actually, I. I said, come on.

[Pete Holmes]

Get him a piece.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, it was going to be fun. But, yeah, the guys used to go. I think Jerry and Larry always shared an office. And I think they would go back and they'd pop open the. The humidor.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jason Alexander]

But I know, Jer. Yeah. Jerry's a cigar smoker. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that.

[Jason Alexander]

That was.

[Pete Holmes]

So the first thing we said. You came into the house and it's. And we're moving out. I'm like, we're moving to Ohio. And we were talking about that. My. My sitcom. The line being clear.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, I.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you remember where your Dressing room was at Radford because.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, well, I had two. Because we were on two different stages at Radford. We started in the back on stage. I'm where the plane. We were in 19. And then we moved to the front on stage nine, right up front. So right up front, if you. If you came out the big garage door and you turned to the right and there was a staircase up to the second floor. And if you went up to the second floor, came around and went three doors down, that was my dressing room.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. Well, I don't think we were in the same. I'm right above Elaine's. I don't know if they changed it to Elaine's Hair Studio.

[Jason Alexander]

I don't know. You know, that lot has completely changed since we were there. It doubled in size. All that other stuff. Yeah, that was. None of that was there. We didn't have. They built a little tiny New York street for us because we were. We had gotten to the point where we kind of were outside a lot and we needed a real New York street. So we were going to. I think the rumor was we were going to go over to Paramount because they had that great. They got the big one and. And Raffert said, wait, we'll put up something. And they did. They built like a 2.2block.

[Pete Holmes]

I wish I could think of a.

[Jason Alexander]

Which is why we never left those two blocks. If you notice, nine years we're on those two blocks. That's right. Nothing else in New York exists. Fantastic.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, this.

[Jason Alexander]

This. Look, we.

[Pete Holmes]

We went right. I always pledge. I'm like, we're gonna do the interview where we don't cover the things that you always get asked.

[Jason Alexander]

Sure. But let's.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's begin again. Even though that was a delight for me.

[Jason Alexander]

Sure.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's my first. My first real question for you. My most genuine curiosity. How is it being Jason Alexander? Here's a little preface. When I opened the door for you, you just made me happy. I was just happy to see you.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, that's so sweet.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you know.

[Jason Alexander]

Right back at you.

[Pete Holmes]

I appreciate that.

[Jason Alexander]

Is that.

[Pete Holmes]

Why is that. Finish your thought.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, finish your thought. How is it. You know, it's generally lovely. I. I do not live a life that I anticipated in any way. Although I knew at 12 years old that I wanted to be an actor. But I. I thought of a very different kind of career. I was just trying. I grew up in New Jersey and I fell in love with the theater. So I was just trying to get across the river. I just wanted to be a stage actor in New York. And that's what I was doing in the 80s, and I was blissfully happy. But it wasn't. It's not this. It's not celebrity. It's not the financial security that I've gotten. And I had no particular fantasies about it, about being this. So it has what, the part that's lovely and wonderful. My mom was a nurse and a nurse educator all her life, and she truly, like all Jewish mothers, wanted me to potentially go into medicine, primarily because she thought that a good life is a life of service, being in service to other people.

[Pete Holmes]

Sorry, we have to go to a commercial break.

[Jason Alexander]

Liquid death.

[Pete Holmes]

Just when I am confronted with that level of beauty and nobility, it is sort of humbling.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. My mom really did believe in that. Yes. And it. It has. It certainly used to strike me that being an actor is the quintessential opposite of that. I do this because I have a flair for it. It brings me joy, and eventually I was able to make a career out of it. But I always thought of it as a very, very sort of selfish profession. You know, God forbid we get to the end of the show and people don't clap. You're going, fuck you. You know, wheelchair. So what I have learned, and maybe it's the body of the career, but it's certainly Seinfeld. And I've told these stories before, but I'll walk through one or two of them quickly.

[Pete Holmes]

You haven't been interrupted by the best.

[Jason Alexander]

I probably hear from people at least once every other week, but several times a month still, specifically about Seinfeld, where they will say to me, either in letter or in person, I was going through really hard stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

I lost a parent. I lost a child. I was fighting cancer. I was serving overseas. I was. Something horrible was happening to me. There was no joy in my life. I would put your show on, and the laughter would come back. And honestly, you guys saved my life.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And you hear that and you go, well, maybe I stumbled into a life of service.

[Pete Holmes]

I was gonna walk you there anyway. Yeah, look, I grew up in the church, and something that blew my mind, I believe it was Rob Bell said this to me. He was like, service doesn't mean you hate it. It doesn't have to be right. We thought, Jim Gaffigan has a great joke. I think it's a great joke where he goes, you want to do something good? And you're like, I want to feed the homeless. And they're like, great. Meet us at 6am in the park. And he's like the homeless. This is when Jim was dirty.

[Jason Alexander]

The homeless.

[Pete Holmes]

And I. That's what I thought service was. If you. It's like people that say, if you're giving money and it doesn't hurt, it doesn't count.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, what is this alcoholic. It really is an alcoholic drunk dad. Upstairs in the attic. Who's gonna beat us? Who? We're never good enough.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

It's this like perverted image. I think service, when it is in line with what you love doing anyway, that's. That's a beautiful symbiotic.

[Jason Alexander]

Well. And now, you know, over the last 15 years or so, I started teaching about 20 years teaching acting. And I've been developing, you know, what do I do? How do I do it, how can I convey it? What. But in my teaching and in my directing, because that's mostly what I've been doing of late. It's all about, don't serve yourself, Serve your partner. Serve your partner. That's a great choice for you. That's really funny. That's a great moment for you. What does it do for the guy standing next to you? Because he's just standing there with egg. Now. Yes, you've got to make a great choice, but you got to make a great choice that tees him up so he can give you something back. And. And it's become a big, big theme in. In my awareness. Anyway, please.

[Pete Holmes]

Speaking of things you've told before, but Michael Rosenbaum, who put us in touch. I listened to you on his podcast and I. There was only one thing that I was like, we have to talk about that. So forgive. I want to talk about teaching. I want to talk about all of those things and directing. But tell the story about when you were having panic attacks on stage in the theater.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, in Broadway Bound.

[Pete Holmes]

Would you mind? Because it ties into what you just said.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. That's the way I got out of it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. It tears us apart no matter what we're doing.

[Jason Alexander]

So it was my. Yeah. Third Broadway show. It was a Neil Simon play. It was in that Brighton Beach Memoirs trilogy. It was called Broadway Bound. I was in the original cast and I knew it was an important piece for me because it was the first time I wasn't singing and dancing on Broadway. I was being an actor and it was Neil Sim and it was a great role. And in the. The set of that thing was a two story house. As if you cut a house in half and you were looking inside. And the second. I have a fear of heights. So it always Kind of freaked me out a little bit anyway, when I was on the second story of the House. But one night, there's a scene where Linda Lavin and the gentleman playing her husband Phil Sterling have this intense scene, but I am asleep on stage in my bed in full view of the audience. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And you don't have a bed. The bed was also.

[Jason Alexander]

Yes. I've only felt like. And, you know, you don't want to be a distraction, so you. You lay there. You don't move. You know.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I interject and say, when I heard you tell this story on Mike's podcast, I was like, oh, he's going to talk about the time he fell asleep.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, no.

[Pete Holmes]

Because of course, like, you're, like, really get into it. You're supposed to be sleeping and you fall asleep.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. No, so. And in the middle of lying up there, a thing that had never happened me before, I got this panic. Panic. Cold sweats. My body started to shake, and every part of my being was going, you got to get off. You got to get off. Get off the stage, get off the stage. Get off the stage. And I just. You know, I'm grabbing the frame of the bed and just holding on because I have to wait out this scene, and then I have to finish the act. It's my scene.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I ask. This isn't. Yes. This isn't just a. It's not like an actor's nightmare. You're not like, I don't know my line.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, no, I knew the line.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm afraid of my. Of the audience. It's not that. It was irrational.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Totally irrational. I think this is the only explanation I have, is because I was doing.

[Pete Holmes]

A lot of the time.

[Jason Alexander]

Sure.

[Pete Holmes]

I was ingesting.

[Jason Alexander]

Yes. I had sorted something before that. I think it's because I was completely inactive, and it had gotten to a point in the run. We'd been doing it for two months, three months, where I wasn't concerned about how to keep the performance alive. I kind of had it in my bones at that point. Yeah. I think I went totally out of my head, and I went, hey, man, you're in a Neil Simon play on a Broadway stage. Right. And it just kind of went, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And I freaked.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

And it was the only place in the show where my character is completely inactive. The rest of the time I'm spewing lines or I'm doing something, and in that pocket, it would just. It gave me time to freak out. So it was so startling that all I did the next day was worry, is that going to happen again? Is going to. And of course it did worse and then worse and then were. And I. It was consuming my life. Because you're. All day long you're going, I don't know what's going on. I don't know how to get rid of it.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, this is what my wife and I say about anxiety is it's like mercury. It wants somewhere to pool.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like you have anxiety. And then it wants. Sometimes when I'm falling asleep at night, I feel my anxiety. I manage my anxiety, but I still have it. I feel it flipping through stations.

[Jason Alexander]

You bet.

[Pete Holmes]

Going like, is this enough to keep you up? Is this enough to keep you up? And I. I get curious about it and I go, do you like this? And it's like, yeah, like, I don't like it. Like, the commander in chief doesn't like it. But anxiety itself is really just like when we're. It feeds on it and when it finds something like, oh, there's the anxiety of your dream not coming true. And it goes, well, guess what. Yeah, fliparoo. There's the anxiety of your dream coming true. And you're like, you son of a. I thought this would put you in the ground. You turn into jfk. I don't know why. And now you're. Now it found a place to pool and you're worried about worrying consuming my life. And now you can't even.

[Jason Alexander]

And now. So now I'm playing mind games in it. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm. I'm lying there on that bed, freaking out and going, good. What I thought was going to happen is I thought I was going to pass out and, and like, you know, undoubtedly soil myself as I go, you know. Yeah. So it was going to be some humiliating, horrible. And I kept going, go ahead, fucking pass out. Go ahead, ruin your life, ruin your career. You know, and that's what, that's the mind games I play. And I was so shaken and humiliated that this was happening that I wasn't telling much of anybody to. Told my wife. Yeah. But I didn't know who else to talk to. I talked to a therapist who said, you know, take a baby antihistamine before you go.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, from the bed, you know.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, I was, you know, I was playing with that.

[Pete Holmes]

But that was asking an old man, take a bite of a nectarine and a sip of Listerine. Chris Ross Robotasm, like little Robotussin will take you Out.

[Jason Alexander]

Anyway, it been. It had gone on for a month, over a month. And so eight times a week, every show, and not telling the cast. I told nobody. And I really. And now I'm starting to say to myself, I think I'm gonna have to not be an actor. I mean, I can't live like this. This is. This is gonna. So my acting guru was a guy named Larry Moss, who's still one of the greatest teachers of acting. He's still in New York, and. And he's became a dear friend. And. And I finally go, I'll talk to Larry, because Larry will have something profound to say. And, you know, so I go to Larry and I said, larry, it's a cr. I'm having these anxiety attacks. I think I'm gonna pass out cold sweats. And I've got. Tried this, I've tried that. I don't know what to do. I'm so embarrassed. I'm so humiliated by it, and I'm worried it's going to derail my career. And, you know, I pour my heart out, thinking I'm going to get some sympathetic response. And he doesn't take a beat. And he goes, you're a egomaniac. And it just hit me like a brick. And I went, what? Because it's all about you. You made it all about you. You're gonna pass out. You're gonna ruin the show, you're gonna ruin the audience. You're gonna ruin the thing you. You. Nobody gives a about you, Jason. You know what they're there for. They want to see the story. Tell them the goddamn story. Wow. And it was the coldest. I mean, it really just rattled me how it did. Yes. I mean, I'm like. It's rattling as a retelling, and I.

[Pete Holmes]

Didn'T like you talking to me that way.

[Jason Alexander]

And I. And I was pissed, I think, and I went on stage that night, and it didn't happen.

[Pete Holmes]

He. I mean, what do you think that is?

[Jason Alexander]

And it didn't happen the next night.

[Pete Holmes]

And it didn't happen the next tub or something.

[Jason Alexander]

And he just went, it's. You're making it all about you. Yeah, you. Now. Yes, it was me ruining someone else's show, ruining someone else's experience, but it was all about what's going to happen to me or what is happening to me. You know, he didn't say this, but it was almost like saying, why don't you lie there and think about what's something you can offer Jonathan Silverman, your scene partner, in the next moment? Why don't you focus on that? That's the kind of thing he was saying without saying it. And he meant it to be harsh, and he meant it to be brutal. He meant it to be shock therapy. And it. And it absolutely was. I mean, that was the. That was the linchpin that's ended it.

[Pete Holmes]

And we're back to a little bit of what your mom said. Service like thinking about someone else. Would you. I mean, that seems like that's a key to happiness. Just like a good life. Like finding your place in the world is considering others a little bit.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. You know, it's gonna sound so pat on the back, but. Are you crazy?

[Pete Holmes]

You're on. You made it weird, my friend.

[Jason Alexander]

Somebody once asked me because I lost, I don't know how many Emmy awards. You know, I was up for it. Yeah. And they said, who'd you lose to?

[Pete Holmes]

Let's give them a big.

[Jason Alexander]

I think three times. I actually think I know because I think the first three times it was David Hyde Pierce on Frasier. Okay. And the other three times, I think was Michael Richards.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Jason Alexander]

So there you go.

[Pete Holmes]

The devil you know.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And Niles.

[Jason Alexander]

So somebody said to me, are you. Do you hate that? Are you bitter about that? Do you. Do you have feelings about it? Yeah. And I said, you know, look, it would be nice. It would have been a lovely thing. There's nothing wrong with getting it. But I said I didn't. Grew up fantasizing about awards. I really didn't. Yeah. If any of them, it was the Tony Award because that's where I thought I was going to.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jason Alexander]

And I won the Tony Award and it was great, and I'm so proud to have it. But I also know it didn't change my life. You know, it was a nice night, and it's a nice thing to see on your resume. But it didn't make me a better actor. It didn't make me a better person, didn't make me a better anything.

[Pete Holmes]

Who's asking for the resume.

[Jason Alexander]

Right. Exactly. Well, sorry.

[Pete Holmes]

Jason. Alex.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Alexander. Is he the one that married Britney Spears?

[Pete Holmes]

My brother, who's a super fan, he said, this is a perfect impression. My brother goes, ask him if he ever gets confused for the guy who married Britney Spears.

[Jason Alexander]

You bet. All the time.

[Pete Holmes]

Really?

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, sure. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I was like, I don't think that happens.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, no, it's.

[Pete Holmes]

And it does.

[Jason Alexander]

I mean, not on the street. People don't come up and go, you married Britney Spears. But in print, they'll often go, the.

[Pete Holmes]

Guy from SEINFELD crazy.

[Jason Alexander]

But anyway, you know, so I.

[Pete Holmes]

You've lost.

[Jason Alexander]

When I did. So they said, do you. Do you hate not getting those awards? And I said, you know, the award, honestly, was the job. Yeah. The people who I worked with, the material I got to do, the. The. The good word of my colleagues, other opportunities. Those are the awards. Yep. The statue. I'll give you every statue in the world. You give me all that other stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jason Alexander]

I'll be happy to try it. So. And all those things are, again, they are about the community. I think the reason I like theater so much is that you spend so much time communally working on one thing.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I just enthusiastically agree? Because I just did a multicam. I've never done theater other than, like, you know, college and whatnot. But, like, we were 300 people on a stage pointed in the same direction. And there's something about these pack animals that we are that love going, showing up, and everyone agrees this is what we're doing.

[Jason Alexander]

Yep.

[Pete Holmes]

And if it's good, imagine if what you're doing is good and you're all doing it together and you're having fun while you're doing it. That's, like, what we were designed to do.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's about the number. I'm reading the book tribe. It's taken me forever. Even though it's a small book and the book selfie, there's all these books that are talking about us as primates and what we. What we need. And it's always striking to me how. How closely it resembles summer camp theater, all that sort of stuff.

[Jason Alexander]

Like.

[Pete Holmes]

Like we want to band together. Like Avatar. I always say. Like Avatar.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We want to be in a tribe, hunting, feeding each other, taking care of each other.

[Jason Alexander]

Challenging each other. Challenging each other. Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Not running from each other, not accusing each other, shooting arrows from a distance, like, together, together. So you got to feel that.

[Jason Alexander]

And very much enjoyed it. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The service thing.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm going to pop my liquid death.

[Pete Holmes]

Do it. Put the mic right up. Very good.

[Jason Alexander]

Look at that.

[Pete Holmes]

Very. And no sizzle. You think there's going to be a sizzle, but it's just 16.9 ounces of gin.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, it's got a fine. A fine bouquet.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, I'm actually.

[Jason Alexander]

But now I'm worried about spilling. I'm gonna put it over here.

[Pete Holmes]

Jay, take a look at this couch, buddy.

[Jason Alexander]

That's true. God knows what bodily fluids are on this thing. I mean, swimming in.

[Pete Holmes]

Jimmy Carr just did this podcast, and he told me about David Lee Roth. Do you know this? David Lee Roth had a mansion. You know, Am I getting this right?

[Jason Alexander]

David Lee Van Halen. Is that Van Halen? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And he. He called his mansion a tomb with a view. Right. So we're coming back to you teaching and. And service and. And. And finding ways to be in a pack pointed in the same direction. Now, in this point, he. He trained to be an EMT so he could be of service like your mother. So I'm wondering if that's what teaching is for you. I have to imagine it's a similar sort of.

[Jason Alexander]

It is absolutely a service. I would be lying if I didn't tell you. It's one of the most selfish things I've ever done. Because the joy. There's a certain. There's many joys, but the two big ones are that feeling you get when you're in class and the teacher asks you a question and you know the answer. Yeah, that happens all the time. Because I go, people will come up and they have a problem. And I go, I have an answer. Not the answer. I have an answer.

[Pete Holmes]

You have may.

[Jason Alexander]

It may help you. So there's that joy of going, oh, my God, look, I studied for the test, and I actually learned something. So there's that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

But there's also that moment, and it's. It's thrilling. And I guess this is part of, you know, being a dad. There's a joy when your kid a does something great and learns a thing, and you go, oh. And then they learn something you didn't know or you can't do. And that's what happens with students is they are often working on a piece of material that. That I go, I can help you. I couldn't do it. Yeah, but I can stand out here and help you. And then they do this thing, and they do. They do. They accomplish something that you go, I would not have made that choice. And it's a great choice, or I. I couldn't have done that moment. They did that moment. You get. It's. It's. Well, look, I stand resolutely on the shoulders of many, many, many giants that came before me. Sure. To help somebody. Up on your shoulder. That's a cool, cool feeling.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

To go, great.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

Go, go, go. Leave me in the dust. That's fine.

[Pete Holmes]

And, you know, I just don't want to be too obvious, but it's like. But I do think people are interested in the. In the idea that you don't need it. What I'm realizing is, like, so much Joy is hidden in things that you don't need to do. Like, people think that once your train comes in, you've got enough grain for many winters that you should just sit around. But tell me, that's a very good.

[Jason Alexander]

Hepburn, by the way.

[Pete Holmes]

You got enough grain? Anyone does. But tell me, what gives? I mean, obviously that's one of it. Like, how are you filling your life with meaning? Teaching is part of it, but it's not just sitting around and going, like, I could get a jet ski. Right? Like that runs out, right?

[Jason Alexander]

No, because that's not of service. That's fun. And you want to take those breaks.

[Pete Holmes]

You and I know, but tell the people, because I think there's a lot of people going, like, if I was Jason Alexander, oh, I'd kick it back.

[Jason Alexander]

And I would just run the.

[Pete Holmes]

Or I'd burn a bag of money in front of my foes or whatever it is.

[Jason Alexander]

But like, first of all, I've never lost, you know, listen, I grew up solidly a kid of working class parents. Yeah, you know, we were fine, but I didn't realize how close to not fine we were on any given day. I mean, my dad, by the time I was born, my father was a widower.

[Pete Holmes]

Sorry, that's a good title. Close to not fine. And it's just a picture of you and your family. Close to not fine. Jason Alexander.

[Jason Alexander]

My dad was a widower. His wife, his first wife took several years to die of a horrible disease. It bankrupted him. And then he had two teenage kids from that marriage. My sister was always a sickly kid, always had, you know, so my dad was so in debt by the time he married my mother. And then I was born. My mother was 39 years old when I was born. Never been married, never had a kid. 40 year old women in 1958 did not get pregnant.

[Pete Holmes]

My mom was around that age, in the 70s, and she's like, it's a miracle. Giving her blood that could have been contaminated. All of this stuff went wrong, right? I should be nicer to my mom.

[Jason Alexander]

You.

[Pete Holmes]

We have it on camera, me realizing I should be nicer to Irina.

[Jason Alexander]

Mental note, note to me.

[Pete Holmes]

But she's like, yeah, that wasn't happening. Right. But even.

[Jason Alexander]

And I come along, my father's 51 years old, and he goes, I, I'll never stop working. I have to work now till the day I die. I mean, it was, I was, you know. Yeah, why don't I start telling you that? So working class, working class kids.

[Pete Holmes]

Because we're talking about how money Isn't everything. But here's.

[Jason Alexander]

And, and as an actor, you never know when your next job is coming. So even though I always made a nice living, I started working professionally. I was 14, I came out of college prematurely and I never did anything but act again. I was, I was always making a good living in my profession because you got, you had. I was doing commercials and I was doing.

[Pete Holmes]

Got spotted by somebody.

[Jason Alexander]

Right, right. Early on.

[Pete Holmes]

Let me tell you a story.

[Jason Alexander]

Yes, please. Well, but I never bought anything I couldn't just pay for. Yeah. Nothing. If I bought a. I bought a motorcycle in New York, it's $10,000. $10,000. I mean, if I couldn't buy it because I wasn't sure there was going to be any more money coming in.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

I kind of still feel so, you know, we go, yeah, we have, we have money. But I also, I'm not, I spend money. I mean we, but we.

[Pete Holmes]

I know you greased me on the.

[Jason Alexander]

Way you own one house. I don't know what that one's about.

[Pete Holmes]

It's completely unnecessary.

[Jason Alexander]

I own my house and I own my mother in law's house. That's our property.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you ever threaten her to burn it down? You're like, this is.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, it's beyond threats. I've burned sections of the house. That bitch is late with rent. I start with the pets and then we just work.

[Pete Holmes]

It's beyond threat.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, but we, I mean, we don't have, we have. I drive a Prius. We don't collect art. My wife's a painter. We don't collect art. We put my wife's work out. Yeah, she doesn't like jewelry. She doesn't. So we don't, we don't spend on luxury things. Where we have spent our money is on our kids education and that includes taking them to places around the world so they can see other people and other worlds, you know, and taking friends with us, buying time with people that we care about and going, let's go have an adventure.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

You know that you. That might be hard for you, but isn't hard for us. So let's go do that.

[Pete Holmes]

Look, just a little bit of love coming your way. It just does me so.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, I thought you were gonna say, can you be my friend? Yes, you can be my friend. Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'd love to go on an adventure. No, I was just gonna say. It just, it just fills my heart up to hear you say this instead of being like, buddy, I don't want to say, but I, I've, I'VE just had people on this couch that hadn't figured it out yet. We're waiting for it.

[Jason Alexander]

You're hearing 20 years of therapy here.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

Okay. I mean, it took you a.

[Pete Holmes]

Figure that out.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, please.

[Pete Holmes]

Where else did you look before you found this balance?

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, please. You know, I. I put way too much emphasis on work.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. What people thought of you.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, well.

[Pete Holmes]

Or just whether or not you were working, that is.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. What. You know, how am I seen? Do I have power? Do I have control? Do I have. You know, I know better. If we've did it my way, you know, it's all that stuff, the ego. The ego has to learn. I had, you know, I. I didn't realize that I had crap as a kid. I thought I was a pretty happy kid, but I. Turns out I was a pretty intimidated, shy, overwhelmed, disproportionately scared kid who overcompensated with all kinds of awful, silly behaviors. And. And it carried in, you know, until I was in my 20s and 30s, until I finally went, you know, I'm a father and I'm having these weird feelings and ideas and things that. The things you were talking about, the Rolodex of things up at night going, yeah, you want to think about that for a while. You want to think about that for a while. And, you know, finally went into therapy and started to work on.

[Pete Holmes]

What were those things? I'm not. This isn't clickbait. You have full control over this.

[Jason Alexander]

I mean, I'm curious. You know, the easy ones are things where I will have said things in interviews that I thought I was just being entertaining. And I was never a comic. I didn't even go into acting thinking I was going to be a comedic actor. And suddenly that's the world I'm in and trying to be funny. And I don't. I don't. I guess I. Now I kind of go, well, I guess I have a sense of humor, but I never thought of myself as a funny guy. And so in emulating comedy and trying to be interesting and trying to be entertaining and trying to be amusing, I would say things that, you know, weren't kind and weren't right and, and, and, you know, you see that all the time, by the way, and augmenting things that are partially true. But then you, you, for entertainment, you blow them up and now they're out there as truth, and you go, oh, that's not quite how it happened. And you're. And you're stuck with that story and just stuff like that. And Hurting people's feelings, making bad choices, saying I'm going to be something, not being it. Saying I'm going to do something, not doing it.

[Pete Holmes]

The thin line between. I run into it all the time. I did it on set today. I'm stopping myself because I'm 43. I'm finally learning to stop myself. But there's a thin line. The. The rush of going maybe a little too far, but it works. And they love it, and you love it, and everyone wins. Now you're addicted to those moments, and then inevitably you're gonna say a little too far, a little too much, and. And you just don't know how to call.

[Jason Alexander]

And it was all about, you know, trying to be some avatar that I thought was interesting and, you know. Or worthy. Worthy is really more the. The issue, because I always felt like I shouldn't be there. Yeah. You know, people should. One of the. I guess a lot of actors go into acting because they love the spotlight. I was hiding in plain sight. Yeah. I didn't love being in my skin. I didn't. I wasn't fond of myself, so I would say things to give a different impression or I would play a part.

[Pete Holmes]

It was a break.

[Jason Alexander]

So. Yeah. So I could. So I'm not that guy. I'm this guy. And it was all in this sort of very immature, young immature attempt to find your own value, to be okay in your own skin. And I didn't start to get there until I was late, into my 40s. I think I'm 62 now, so I haven't. I haven't been. Yeah. You know, anywhere close to being. Oh, you're okay. This is a relatively new, you know, thing, and it. It's. It's a lot of experience and a lot of putting real time and attention. Not egotistical time and attention into yourself, but. But real time. You know, going to a therapist and being honest and going. That was a terrible thing. Mistake. Finding a way to get past it and going, okay, that happened for a reason. I'm here now. Yeah. And. And now I know what. What calls people to that. And one of the. One of the lovely gifts it gives is that I have younger friends who are going through exactly the same thing. And I can say to somebody who's going through a tough patch, you don't think much of yourself right now. You're in one of the top 5% of people in the world. You know why? Because you give a. And you're looking at it, and it's scary, and it's dark and you don't like what you see in the mirror, and you're still looking in the mirror and you're still working on it. That makes you better than most people, not worse. Wow. It takes. It takes guts and character and it takes caring about other people to keep looking in the mirror and not seeing what you like and go, I have to work on this. I have to work on this. So, you know, that is, we say.

[Pete Holmes]

All the time, would you note that? Or obviously, that was just so beautiful. We. We say all the time, what use am I to people? Not broken. You know what I mean? Like, how that's great. Not even as an entertainer, just as a human being.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, I have a daughter. She's not. Not yet at the age where she can ask things. But, like, when. If you were to ask me something, I would go, I know, I just did it. You were like, oh, I go over the line. Or I exaggerate this. I'm like, buddy, I can't tell you. And especially the comedian Persona. You think we're like, hey, what's up? Look at that. And you think we go, we're smoking a cigarette with the martini. I'm gonna tell you something. We go in the bathroom and we.

[Jason Alexander]

Go, oh, my God, what did I do? Yeah, right, sure.

[Pete Holmes]

And the most harsh ones I know, the, the ones that would be like, look at this piece of. They're the most sensitive. I could tell stories, but I don't want to tell tales out of school. But, like, the, the biggest people that are like, think they don't give a fuck. They're. They're going backstage going, like, I got.

[Jason Alexander]

Three people in my head right now. Just as you say, right? Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

And. But I love what you said. It's like that you weren't getting into acting because you wanted to razzle dazzle and shine. You wanted to get away. I also loved what you said because it took me a long time to figure out. I say on this pod all the time, your shit is your shit. Meaning maybe you had a middle class. Or in my case, I had an upper middle class upbringing. I have my parents, as father Greg Boyle would say, I won so many lotteries. I was educated, I was fed, I was housed. I was. Whatever it might be. Right. Zip code, lottery, he calls it. But still, a good therapist will help you uncover, like, it doesn't mean anyone failed or, or was wrong or bad. It just comes with driving. A car tread on the tire is going to wear off. Something's gonna stick.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And you, you had to Come to terms with your shit. Was your shit. Like, even though you weren't. Yeah, this, this or this. Some things happen that you had to do, and it's.

[Jason Alexander]

Listen, I don't want to present a done package. I mean, I. I still go. Yeah, I go every. I go several times a month. I've been working with this wonderful woman for 20 years. Yeah. You know, and it's still you. You. It's. I. I say this. I'm knocking on whatever the hell this is.

[Pete Holmes]

It's got, I don't think by tbs, so I'm sure it's pressway.

[Jason Alexander]

So I think I can see myself before I act out of my neuroses. That doesn't mean the thought patterns are still there, you know, and you still have to go, is that real what I'm feeling and thinking right now? Or is that a leftover? Is that. Is that a trained behavior? Is that a. It's still. I still walk into a room to this day. I can't remember. I'm gonna name drop. I think it was. I think it was Marty Short, because I was doing the Producers.

[Pete Holmes]

I was gonna think about. I was thinking about him. When you said, I didn't dream of winning a Tony or I did like you and Martin Short, I almost said that, yes.

[Jason Alexander]

I think. I think it's. When I was working with Marty and he must have referenced a couple of people, and I go, oh, yeah, I don't think that person likes me very much. And I don't. Yeah, I don't think they like me. And I must have said it again. And he went, you know, you have a problem.

[Pete Holmes]

You know you have a problem.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. You really think people don't like you. And I go, that's true. Wow. That's true. Now, clearly, it's because I wasn't very crazy about myself. So I'm projecting out. And very possibly in projecting out like that, doing things again that I don't like or admire and going, well, that's.

[Pete Holmes]

Why they're all wrong. To reinforce it, of course, to prove yourself a prophet. You've just nailed something. In the book Selfie, they're talking about how we build reality. It's sort of disturbing. I don't find it disturbing, but it's like, there's no free will. A lot of scientists say there's no free will. And what we're doing is we're doing what we do, and then our brain retroactively goes, I did that because of this. Right. We build these stories, but it's very dangerous if you are your story. Literally, scientifically, neurologically. Be very careful what story you're telling. Because if you're saying people don't like me, buddy, you're in good company. Val, my wife, points out, she's like you. You'll test people. You'll go, like, I don't think they like me. And then you'll go like, what's up, dumb fuck? Or whatever it is. And I'm literally the example I always give. But it's true. I was like, oh, my God, your baby's so fat. Like, I talked about how fat someone's baby was to test them, to see, will you love me even if I'm a rascal? Or whatever it is. But it's because I'm going, I'm too much of a rascal. Let's just cut to it. Let's cut to the abandonment now, right here's.

[Jason Alexander]

Now, tell me if you ever did this. So I used to go to a party when I was a, you know, young teenager. And I would sort of put myself off on the side and be obviously kind of dark cloud to see if anyone would notice or care enough to come over.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, yeah, let's go for a ride. Let's smoke cigarettes with sunglasses on at night. Because that's me.

[Jason Alexander]

I would.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course, I would do that. In fact, I wonder if you feel this. There was something. Obviously it's dramatic, but it almost feels theatrical. It's like, I'm gonna put on this silent show to see if I can draw a crowd. And I still love it. What we're doing right now reminds me of performance. It's like, I go, like, you ever do this? And isn't that what we're doing with the audience? Like one Costanza? Like my dad, I see him being sometimes at odds with who he is. Cause he relates to George. But then I see him. See me, see him relating to George. George. And he's like, ah, that's. That's. That's sad. Or something. I'm like, man, we all relate to that. We're all. And by the way, I get it.

[Jason Alexander]

He's.

[Pete Holmes]

He's trying to be my dad, even though He's. He's almost 80. And I'm like. I've said to him point blank, I'm like, dad, the parenting is over. Let's just be guys. But he's still. And I admire it on a certain level that he still wants me to think that he doesn't have neuroses. And I'm like, we're all George we're all Tony Soprano. You know what I mean? We're all Don Draper, these depraved or in need or broken people.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

And would you talk a little bit? That that's the job, is to share. I'm gonna plant one thought in your head and see what. What it makes you think of. You're under the lights, you're louder than everybody. You're on stage, and yet you use this opportunity in a. Again, as a primate, an alpha position. I'm loud, I'm above you. I have the vantage point. And yet I'm going to use this vantage point to tell you about my insecurities, my vulnerabilities, and my fears. That's, in my opinion, good art. It sucks. If you get up and you be like, I'm the king. I'm the best. Unless it's a parody or something. What does that make you think?

[Jason Alexander]

Well, you're absolutely right. It's also. Here's where my sense of humor, because I also grew up in New Jersey, and so part of my idea of what funny is is busting people's balls. Everybody in Jersey wants to be Joe Pesci, you know, of course, I think that's the epitome of comedy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. With Tomei. With Tomei.

[Jason Alexander]

And. And what I've tried to learn over the years is it's okay on me, but it's not my best card, you know? Cause it's. It's not the one that I. It's not the one I feel. It's the one I've observed a lot, and I know I can create a Persona that it sits well on, but. But then I go, but. So I used to do.

[Pete Holmes]

I agree. So hard. That's all. I agree. So I grew up in Boston. It's not New Jersey.

[Jason Alexander]

Nope. See, I went to school in Boston.

[Pete Holmes]

Boston in the 80s, you bet. And I was walking around, and I love Lenny Clark. I've met him a few times. I would see guys like Lenny, and I was like, making my father laugh, and I was like, I can't do that. I can't do that. The way that they'd be like, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't even want to do it. Fake to you. I love Rose because we all go in agreeing that we're gonna do it, but just, like, to the audience or whatever, it's not my cup of tea, and it's rough. Literally made me think comedy wasn't for me until I started being like, am I the only one? When I pee in the woods and I share some fear. Like I think a bug is gonna swim up the pee and go. And people start laughing and you're like, like, you know, the more neurotic.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

More vulnerable.

[Jason Alexander]

Letting people in.

[Pete Holmes]

Letting people in.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You get laughs because you tell them.

[Jason Alexander]

Like you let people. That's what, that's what George was all about. Here's my, here's my foibles. Here's my, that's what Larry is so good. And Jerry, they're so good at creating a character that goes, yes, I'm the lord of the idiots. I mean, that was stands as big cry. I am the lord of the idiots.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jason Alexander]

No one's stupider than me. No one's less valuable than me.

[Pete Holmes]

And when I read sign language and I saw that that was my first intro to Jerry was just reading the material and I was like, obviously no disrespect to him. I was like, I have thoughts like this. And he says in the intro, the difference between me and you is I write it down. And I was like, I can write it down. I'm 15. I'm literally doing nothing. Like I have nothing going on. I can write down my little thoughts. So one of them just to share was whenever I would go to the movies when I was a kid and the lights started to dim, I would be afraid that I was dying. Just for a second. I, I'd be like, is the movie beginning or is it all ending? That sounds like I kind of turned it into a Seinfeld bed.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm only laughing because sometimes, sometimes there's very subtle lighting changes in restaurants where I guess they go from late afternoon to the evening service. Sure. And that's when I'm sitting there and I'll turn to the person next to me going, are the lights dimming or am I having a stroke?

[Pete Holmes]

Because maybe I'm having a crazy moment.

[Jason Alexander]

Right? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm telling you, one of my go to lights. Lights dim. Am I stroking? Am I dying? And you do it.

[Jason Alexander]

Is this it? Is this it? It's a very specific time. And it only happened, you know how many restaurants do that while they have people sitting there?

[Pete Holmes]

But hilarious. Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

That feeling.

[Pete Holmes]

Imagine how we would have been in candle times. Oh, a breeze and we're panicked. A breeze and we're panicked. So I'm sorry, you were, you were just saying the ball breaking jersey thing. Couldn't relate more.

[Jason Alexander]

No. And as I was relating wasn't for you. I, I, I have had to come to most of my therapy, most of my journey of trying to figure out how this works is starting from a point where I'm not exactly sure what happened. I mean, I can point to certain things in my childhood where I went that was traumatic. That's traumatic, and that's traumatic. But I had a great childhood. I really did. But somehow I have to figure out how to go from a kid who is disproportionately frightened of everything, including Big D. Death, you know, dying. Not good enough. Not interesting enough. I'm sorry. That's what I mean. That's another five years of therapy right there.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my God. Do not disturb on Jason.

[Jason Alexander]

It doesn't matter. I've had airplane mode. Do not disturb. And it rings in the theater, and I want to kill myself because I feel like Patti LuPone is everywhere, and she's gonna, you know, tear my eyes.

[Pete Holmes]

Off, tell me if this isn't a curb or a Georgia. I was on Broadway recently. We went and saw Billy Crystal's show Saturday night. Mr. Saturday night. I realized I have a tile. You know those tiles that help you find your keys? And I'm wearing tight pants, and it's going. And I'm like, don't. Don't move. Because it goes. And then my phone's gonna. And then Billy Crystal is going to go, is that Ike Barinholtz? I'm just kidding. I'm gonna. You can't turn it off.

[Jason Alexander]

No, I don't know from the tile, but I do know from everything else.

[Pete Holmes]

Look, I don't know from tile, but yes, keep going. I'm so sorry, but we're.

[Jason Alexander]

We're agreeing, but it's. It's all been about, you know, going from that. That scared. I. I don't. I. I don't want to be seen to. I want to be seen a certain way. And that's a thing. Yeah. To. To going. You know what I said to my therapist when I. You know, I. We've been going to therapy, but I turned 60 a couple years ago, and I said we should step it up a little bit. Why? I said, well, I think this is act three. I think the curtain's going up on act three. And I don't know that I've ever authentically be who Been who I am. I'm not sure I know what it is. Yeah. And I. I'd like to check out. Going. All right. I figured it out. I know. Not a perfect person. I'm not always going to do the right thing, but I know who I truly am.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

And I can sit with that. I can Be in the room with that, and I can go. That's okay. If we can get to that before I check out, that would be nice.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's what you want.

[Jason Alexander]

That's what you want.

[Pete Holmes]

You want to accept yourself.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Like, and it involves changing behaviors and changing thought patterns and, you know, working on relationships. And, you know, it's. It's a lot of. If you're gonna do it, you gotta. You gotta put some time into it. And it's. Listen, it's also. It's a luxury to be able to do it. I'm. You know, I'm not sitting here going, oh, my God, where's my next meal? How am I gonna pay my mortgage? Sure. If. If that's your, you know, a big concern. You. You don't have time for this stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, you buy your house. Motorcycle stuff.

[Jason Alexander]

You buy. You betcha, baby.

[Pete Holmes]

But.

[Jason Alexander]

But yeah, it's been. It's been a fascinating, but it's a.

[Pete Holmes]

Brave and it's a. It's a noble thing to go. Like, again, it's what you said. I'm not gonna look away. I see things I don't like. Buddy, you're saying something that is right beneath the surface. I would say, at least for me, but I would posit of everybody, it's right under the surface going, like, am I being authentic? I do this. I bet on stage, I go, round of applause. Who here would just break out crying if your dad looked you in the eye and said, I'm so sorry? And I just think it's an absurd thing to say, but it's also funny. And I'm doing a show. Bill Burr's on the show, and there's these kind of, like, clearly, Bill Burr fans in the front. They're muscly. They're not enjoying. They're enjoying me, but they're waiting for.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, waiting for Bill.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm like, all right. Waiting for Bill. And I go, what about you? Why are you laughing? I'm doing what you said. Like, you know, But I'm like, what's wrong? Why didn't you laugh? Like, where are you? And he's like. I go, you think you have a good relationship with your father? He goes, yeah. And I go, you haven't dug deep enough.

[Jason Alexander]

That's.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I said.

[Jason Alexander]

Meaning.

[Pete Holmes]

And my wife died. They didn't laugh. My fans laughed.

[Jason Alexander]

But.

[Pete Holmes]

But there's something about going deep, like, oh, this is what I said. I go, do you have a good relationship with your father? This is a good question. Or are you still just really good at playing the part they assign to you. Do you relent? Do you take the sides at Thanksgiving, go back in time to who they programmed you to be, and go, yes, Papa. Or whatever it is?

[Jason Alexander]

That's really an interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? Do you have a good relationship with the real you, or does that not even occur to you, that that's possible? That you just go like, all right, it's time to repeat in 1994.

[Jason Alexander]

Right? Yeah, absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

These are the hard questions. But I see you doing that. This started as a compliment for you. You're doing what you said to do, which is to look in the mirror and not look away.

[Jason Alexander]

You try. You try. Yeah, you know, it's. It's an ongoing thing. You know who's really good? He's on my Instagram feed. Do you know. Do you know Saad Guru? Yes. Sadhguru. I love this.

[Pete Holmes]

He's a friend.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm just kidding.

[Pete Holmes]

Wouldn't it be great if.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I, I.

[Jason Alexander]

When I'm listening to him, you call him Sad. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Stevie Guru. I didn't know you were into that sort of stuff.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, my God. He. Somehow the algorithm delivered him to me.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Jason Alexander]

And I started watching his reels, and then I, you know, I. I probably catch two or three of his little snippet things every day. And I go, this guy, he figured a lot of out. Yeah. He's got a really cool, simple way of looking at stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jason Alexander]

I love the one. I'll share this one. It's my favorite one that he goes, I'll do my. I'll do my Sadhguru invitation. You wake up in the morning. Is it yes? Yes or no? Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes or no?

[Jason Alexander]

You wake up in the morning and you immediately think, oh, what you didn't do yesterday, what you have to do today, what you're not looking forward to. Oh, the mistake you made. Oh, you have to do. He says, you know what I do when I wake up every day? I smile because a million people did not wake up today. A million people did not wake up this morning. You did. Wow. You saw the light of this day. Is that not worth a smile? Wow. You do this every day. It'll change your life. And I heard that tape four months ago. Five months ago. I wake up every morning now. Yeah. And I go, hey, I made it. I got another one. It does make a difference.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. I'm gonna give you one that I think is going to blow your mind. Very similar to Sadhguru. I add to that I. In the morning the first thing I try, every morning, the first thing I try to say is, yes, thank you. Like, yes, thank you. You have to get up. I know you do this. Gotta get up for press or some crazy flight.

[Jason Alexander]

Dark.

[Pete Holmes]

Your wife's still asleep. Fuck it, man. Yes, thank you. It's absurd. I talk about it a lot. Your brain has no idea what to do. It's so ready to go into that groove of like, she gets to sleep, get back in a bag in the dark. Yes, thank you. There's another bit I do where I go, don't you kind of love it? And I go, everything. You know, you can't find your keys. And you're like, where are my fucking keys? And you're like, don't you kind of love it? Isn't there something in you? Because when you were a kid, you played like, where am I keys? And when I'm looking for my keys, I go, I'm a fucking grown up.

[Jason Alexander]

And.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's that sort of. Yes, thank you. To all it. To stress, to traffic, to missing a flight. It's a great life hack, but this is the one I'm gonna give you. Yeah, this is from a monk. I just. I saw him on YouTube. And a little shout out to the fact that I know social media, all this, you know, flashing stuff coming at us. But there are these little oases. They're little oases. Just learn the plural of oasis. Yeah, there's an oasis. Beatles joke. Anyway, this guy says when you go to bed at night, I've been doing this. He goes, we call it go to bed in a sea of merit, meaning replay all the things you did well that day. Don't think about what you have to do tomorrow. Don't think about what you did wrong. Just go like, you drove to my house to do this podcast.

[Jason Alexander]

That's a gift. You gave. A gift.

[Pete Holmes]

You were present. You gave wisdom freely. You know, like, what I'm saying is, it doesn't have to be like, I saved a cat out of a tree. It can just be, I was kind, I was funny, I was present. I. I was attentive to my bad driver in.

[Jason Alexander]

At the intersection. Even though they were clearly wrong.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. I. And what's funny is it helps you fall asleep immediately.

[Jason Alexander]

Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

It's incredible.

[Jason Alexander]

Very good.

[Pete Holmes]

Because your brain is. Is trying to flip the channels, but if you bore it with what you're good about, it goes, fuck this guy. And it goes right to bed. And you wake up and you feel better, you. You feel better. It's absolutely changed my life.

[Jason Alexander]

You want the one I started with today?

[Pete Holmes]

Hit it.

[Jason Alexander]

Because I only heard it last night. I thought it was so brilliant. What a sad guru again.

[Pete Holmes]

I was like, no, thanks.

[Jason Alexander]

He goes, you will never do anything with willpower. You want to lose weight. You want to make a change. I have habit. You want to do this. You will never get anywhere with willpower, because willpower is. I don't want to do it. It, but I will do it anyway. He said, you'll never get there. You must do it with being blessed.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Jason Alexander]

So, like, four weeks ago, I. I went off wheat and sugar.

[Pete Holmes]

No more weight. Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And, you know, it's like, I just heard you start. You know, and his whole thing is, yeah, if you look at it as I'm. I'm fighting that fight, the fights are tiring. But if you go, I am blessed with energy I didn't have. I am blessed with. I'm tasting things I didn't taste. I am blessed with my eyes. Look, I am blessed with this. I'm blessed with. And you go, oh, so, yeah, if I'm blessed to do. He goes, it's just. It's. What's great about these people is that they are able to make it almost like a NOOM program. They go, yeah, here. Here's a thought for the day. Yeah, this is that thing in action.

[Pete Holmes]

Real, real practical, behavioral.

[Jason Alexander]

And you go, oh, that's so smart.

[Pete Holmes]

And it sounds like something, as an actor, a director would say to you. It's like, george, you're doing it. Sorry, Jason, you're doing it. I was picturing them directing you as George. I didn't think you were George. I see. You're doing it like it's a. What if you did it this way? It's like a shift. Same scene, different intention.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

I will join you. I really feel like we're vibing on a lot of the same frequencies, and I just died. What did he say right before he died?

[Jason Alexander]

He said we were on the same physical.

[Pete Holmes]

What if that's the funniest thing to say before you die? You're like, I feel like you and I are on the exact same path. Dead. No, I forget what it was. I. I'm one of those people that had my nutritional life changed by a series of Netflix documentaries. And this is something you should overhear at, like, Cafe Gratitude or something. But here, by the way, I have.

[Jason Alexander]

To intervene one second. My writing partner, my podcast. I'm going to talk about my podcast. My podcast partner, Peter Tilden. I Took him to Cafe Gratitude.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

He actually yells. That's where everything is named. I am grateful. I am serene. He yells out, I've been waiting 15 minutes for my. I am patient.

[Pete Holmes]

It's fantastic. Truly fantastic.

[Jason Alexander]

Finish your thought. You on Large Point.

[Pete Holmes]

You go to the Large.

[Jason Alexander]

Are there others? I didn't even know.

[Pete Holmes]

But I go, it's a chain.

[Jason Alexander]

It's a chain.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm going to launch it all the time. Never seen you there. Saw Moby there.

[Jason Alexander]

That's my. That. I was there for lunch today. Can I tell you gratitude. I was a great white.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. On.

[Jason Alexander]

In Largemont on launch month.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, the, the, the.

[Jason Alexander]

I've now told every paparazzi this is.

[Pete Holmes]

For no one but the Cafe Gratitude on lunch. Want is one of the best restaurants ever. And you can go Sunday, 11am no problem.

[Jason Alexander]

No problem. No problem.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know why I'm there constantly.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, no, it's one of my wife's favorite restaurants. It's.

[Pete Holmes]

I think it's my favorite restaurant. I mean, so you can.

[Jason Alexander]

You're vegan.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm a bad vegan. I wish there were more bad vegans because it shouldn't be a zero sum thing.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

But I'm mostly vegan.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Going to Crossroads tonight.

[Jason Alexander]

You ever go to Crossroads? Sure. My wife loves it. My wife is Vegas. Vegas. Yeah. Vegas.

[Pete Holmes]

There should be more Vegas.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. More Vegas. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because it's a daunting thing to go full. I'm probably on my way there to being Vegas.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you talk about the, the face and the taste and all that stuff.

[Jason Alexander]

And, you know, and the, the belly could go down a little more. I think I've been holding off my doctor's visit for a year and a half because he always yells at me. He just goes, what do I have to do? What do I have to do? Hilarious. It's always, you got to knock off 20 pounds. I go, really? Is it still just 20? I'm doing good.

[Pete Holmes]

You plus 20 is, is like, that's my zero.

[Jason Alexander]

But he always with the sad little face. What do I have to do? I don't want to put you on medicine. What do I have to do?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my God, I want this doctor.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, he's great.

[Pete Holmes]

I. I just got my one year physical thing and I was like, she told me to take more fiber because even though I'm a vegan, I have high cholesterol.

[Jason Alexander]

You may just have high cholesterol.

[Pete Holmes]

Exactly. So she's like, you need to be taking more fiber. And I was like, I didn't do that.

[Jason Alexander]

So did she send you for a plaque test?

[Pete Holmes]

No, that's my dentist.

[Jason Alexander]

No, no, no. Listen to me.

[Pete Holmes]

Look at this.

[Jason Alexander]

My mother wasn't nice. Listen to me. Yeah, I have high cholesterol. It's about 220, 222, somewhere in there. And my doctor is not, he doesn't like statins. He goes, if I don't have to, I don't want to. You seem healthy. Go get a heart plaque test.

[Pete Holmes]

What does that mean?

[Jason Alexander]

So they measure the plaque that's building up in your arteries. They do a turkey. They put you in the MRI tube.

[Pete Holmes]

And they're non invasive?

[Jason Alexander]

No, it's not invasive. Okay?

[Pete Holmes]

Because you can't invade.

[Jason Alexander]

And three years ago, zero, you did it. Zero. Because you have no plaque. So you got high cholesterol. It's not doing anything. That's the danger of high cholesterol is it builds a plaque in the arteries. There's fat in your blood and if it, if it, you know, starts to congeal, you get fat in your blood. There's no fat in my blood. No, not in yours. No.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I'm fine.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Here's the this shift that a series of Netflix self documentaries changed my life. They were like, don't look at it. Like, I can't eat these foods. Look at it. I can eat those foods. I don't want to make it like a self love thing. It's like, it's like a blessing thing. Like I can eat cake. I've just done it enough times to. You ever notice you eat something that you shouldn't eat and like an hour or two later you just have panic? Have you noticed this trend?

[Jason Alexander]

I almost killed myself with a piece of cheesecake in New York years ago.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm gonna need to hear this story. Let's go to the mid rolls. When we come back, Jason Alexander and the Deadly cheesecake. Pardon the interruption, friends. This episode is brought to us by our friends at dad Grass. I am seeing whenever I'm in like a cool shop, like a shop that, that sells, let's say, shoes and jeans that I absolutely love and need to have. They always have dad grass and mom grass at the checkout. And I'm so. That's how I first found it. And I'm so glad they are a sponsor for this podcast. Dad Grass and Mom Grass, if you don't know, are incredible ways to relax, to chill out and to keep your head clear. So chill out all summer long with dad Grass because it's too nice out to be couch locked. They'll mellow you out while keeping your head clear and ease away the stress of the day. What is it? Dad grass is legal organic hemp that relaxes your body and mellows your mind. Dad grass CBD products are made with 100 organic hemp that's easy to dose and the effects come on smooth. I can attest for that. They it looks, you know, it looks like it could be a serious, serious thing, but it's the return of the casual smoke. I took a couple puffs and I waited for some freight train to hit me, but I was delighted to see like, no, this is like some rocking chair stuff.

[Jason Alexander]

This is.

[Pete Holmes]

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[Jason Alexander]

Okay, go. Yeah, I had gone to see a piece of theater in New York.

[Pete Holmes]

I thought you were gonna say I wanted to see a piece of cheesecake.

[Jason Alexander]

No, no, no. I was in New York and I went to see a. A musical that was previewing and it was. It was just everything about it made me angry. It was the only time I've ever left the theater angry going, how do you open your doors and charge money and call this, you know, And I'm. And I'm with two friends and we go to the now defunct Carnegie Deli.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, sure.

[Jason Alexander]

Which is notorious for having portions that no human being should ever eat. And I order two slices of cheesecake.

[Pete Holmes]

Because you're on tilt from theater.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm rage eating. Yeah, I'm raging. And I down them with a glass of milk. And I get back to the hotel and I lay down and I can hear my heart going, oh, God. Oh, Jesus. I mean, it's just trying to push this, this sludge through my system. And I thought, I am going to die. Like the play. D'oh.

[Pete Holmes]

Fun chicks.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, that's right. It was fun factor. It was exactly right.

[Pete Holmes]

It's a star.

[Jason Alexander]

It Was. And I. And believe me, I got up, I walked around, I drank water because I went, this is. I mean, I don't have a heart problem, but I went, that. That was madness.

[Pete Holmes]

I just ate a heart problem. What happened? You were okay?

[Jason Alexander]

I was fine. But, yeah, I went back the next night, got another slice. No, I didn't.

[Pete Holmes]

I knew a guy who. He did a lot of. This is not the Joe Rogan experience, but here we are. People realize the Joe Rogan experience is a thing, and they just shut this off. Wait, I forgot. He smoked a lot of dmt. Do you know what DMT is?

[Jason Alexander]

I do not.

[Pete Holmes]

Dimethyltryptamine. You ever love how, like, psychonauts, like big people into psychedelics, know all the chemicals? You're not talking to that person, but dabbled. But dimethyltryptamine is. Is the strongest of the psychedelics. It's like Buck Rogers. You smoke this very acrid, harsh smoke. I'm not. I've never done it. And you go into another dimension that is like overlaying on this dimension. And everyone says the same thing. It's more real than this thing and all this sort of stuff. They also say that when we die, this is not proven. There's no data for this. But people are like, this might be what's happening when we die, because DMT is in our bodies, okay? So maybe we start to process it and we have these.

[Jason Alexander]

A thing, an experience.

[Pete Holmes]

But people are really like. Or is it like a plant that really makes you teleport? Because that seems to be the experience, but because it's like. Again, I couldn't stress this enough. I'm not selling it to you. Again, I haven't done it, but it's like. It's like the most inexplicable, crazy thing you could do. That's like dying. It's like you're gone. You go, and anything can happen. I've had people tell me they smoke DMT and they're in a coliseum, like ancient Rome kind of style, but it's filled with aliens. Real Star Trek stuff. Loved you on Orville, by the way. There they are, and he's inside of a crab, and he's fighting another crab to the death. And I was like, if I've ever done a psychedelic, it's usually been for a spiritual reason. And I'm like, I don't know what I would learn from being in a crab duel. So I'm out. But they say it might be what happens when you die. So a friend of mine, he had an accident. They gave him some opioids for the pain. He may have taken too many. And he realized, like, you and the cheesecake. This is Shane Moss, by the way. He told the story on the podcast. He realized that he was dying because he started having a DMT trip.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

[Pete Holmes]

He started crying, crossing over. And just like you, this is the best human beings can do. Get up and walk around a little bit. Just get up and try to like little league, walk it off. And it worked with you and the cake. And he, he brought it.

[Jason Alexander]

That's amazingly impressive.

[Pete Holmes]

Isn't that wild?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He realized, like, if he yielded, if he just was like. Because it was pleasant, he was kind of like, oh, wow. But then he was like, oh, I'm dying. That's how Shane tucks. And he got up and kind of like cold water on its face came back.

[Jason Alexander]

Is wild.

[Pete Holmes]

Isn't that crazy?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Have you ever done any psychedelics? Again, not clickbait.

[Jason Alexander]

I am the most boring man on the planet. I speak for myself and my wife when I tell you I've never been drunk, I've never been high.

[Pete Holmes]

I am into it. Yeah, I heard you say that to Michael Rosenbaum.

[Jason Alexander]

That.

[Pete Holmes]

And that was actually where I was going. You. You got on the couch like an actor. Like somebody who's like, this is what's happening. This is the scene. Giant couch. Yeah, I'll get on the.

[Jason Alexander]

I'll get on the couch.

[Pete Holmes]

Meaning when I think of, like, obviously it's a cliche, but your body is an instrument. You, you mentioned that you don't drink when you're doing Broadway. Eight shows a week. You can't do it.

[Jason Alexander]

People can. I can't.

[Pete Holmes]

You. I, I'm absolutely the same way, especially a little bit older. I couldn't do what I used to do, which is, you know, drink after the shows and all that, and then do it all again the next day. This is a stand up show, but still, stand up is an hour long yelling model.

[Jason Alexander]

I get it.

[Pete Holmes]

See that, that Mabus thing, the, the throat steamer.

[Jason Alexander]

That, that's, that's really theater. Best friend.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's your best friend.

[Jason Alexander]

You bet.

[Pete Holmes]

Because you're like, I can't do it. I'm doing warm ups. I'm going to the doctor. I can't hit the notes of the monologue. And I heard you talking about that. But the reason I mentioned, I want to hear a little bit about your acting, your, your philosophies of acting. The best advice you've ever gotten about acting.

[Jason Alexander]

Those Those.

[Pete Holmes]

Those little mantras that you keep with you, but also the physicality of it. Because when I'm like, oh, maybe I should get more serious about acting, I always bristle that I'm like, and I'm not even proud of this. It's not like, oh, I don't like musicals because they sing. I don't like acting classes because they're going to make me walk like a polar bear or something. You know what I mean? But there's this, like, embarrassment threshold you have to get over to get in your body and not be embarrassed to emote, feel, move. Like, how many actors would benefit from a little bit of this? Right?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Tell me.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, again, I guess it's. It's how you. So acting was what I. What I mentioned before. I always felt. I never walked on the stage. I was this guy or that guy or this guy. So to me, I can do things as George that I wouldn't want to do as Jason.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow.

[Jason Alexander]

You know, the thing that everybody said to me, you know, please sign this photo. And I stop because I go, I could be sending this to children. Is the thing in Seinfeld where George was on the chaise and Kramer was doing the photo show boxer shorts, and they made a poster out of it that's become fairly famous at this point.

[Pete Holmes]

Who books that? I think it's something I can get.

[Jason Alexander]

Who did that? I mean, that scene would have been hard for Jason. Jason goes, come on. I'm 20 pounds overweight and I'm bald. I'm short and I'm.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

George is like, let's go. You know, let's go.

[Pete Holmes]

So you just went into him.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. It's just like, yeah. And. And the ideas of. To me, of. There are a lovely subset of people on this planet whose body I think could be considered fine art. So the display of it is kind of like a rapturous thing. You go, well, on a good day, when God is doing yes, you know.

[Pete Holmes]

The best firing on, that's what we're.

[Jason Alexander]

Supposed to look like. The rest of us look like this. And there's tons of us. We outnumbered them, you know, big time. So I've always thought bodies are funny and my body's funny. And as long I'm much happier using my. My body as a tool for comedy than I am of romance, you know?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Oh, certainly for me, I thought you meant words. What about words versus body?

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, I much rather do words. See, I thought I was going to be the great classical actor of all time, so I was drawn to Language?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

You know, not physical stuff. I had to learn to use my body. And it's surprising. That's really. You talk about talking about acting. A lot of what I teach is the physicality of intention. So intent. You know, in any given scene, hopefully you got two characters or more and they want something different to happen. I'm trying to get you to do something. You're trying to get me to do something. It can be small, it can be huge. The scene is about how do they work on each other to jockey for the outcome. So when you're finding that stuff, you actors can only play. Yes, we can. I always say this in class. I go, you know, we speak lines, we say lines. They don't call us speakers, they don't call us orators. We portray feelings, emotions, but they don't call us emotors, they call us actors. Why? Our job. Actions. That's what we bring. That's what's not on the page, the actions. Wow. So actions are physical gestures. And I find most actors, especially student actors, they leave their body behind. They don't use their body. And the reason they don't use it is because they watch a lot of film where actors seem to be stock ass still.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And I say to them, yes, many actors are. Many of them are underwhelming. Remember, they've got scoring and camera shots and makeup and light and all kinds of things helping to create a moment in those.

[Pete Holmes]

And there's a wisdom to that. Paul Bettany did this podcast and I was like, tell me the greatest lesson you've learned about acting. And he said, don't forget, let the camera do some of it.

[Jason Alexander]

That's very good. And by the way, that's why I'm not. I think I'm a less effective filmic actor than I am a stage actor because I forget sometimes that the camera will fill in some of that information. But when I teach, I teach actors to use their bodies very fully to show their partner and the audience what their intention is. Because if the other actor can go, oh, you're trying to threaten me. Well, then they get to decide, well, how do I? Do I feel threatened? Or do I laugh that off? Or do I? But if they can't read what you're doing, they just make something up. So the ball never gets passed back and forth. Yeah. So body becomes a better bed.

[Pete Holmes]

Having a panic attack.

[Jason Alexander]

You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

Like, it's true.

[Jason Alexander]

But body, body and use of body becomes very important in the work. And then once your body understands what you're playing what your action is.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

You can actually then take the body out of it and it will have informed everything else in the performance.

[Pete Holmes]

Think about it. Then stop thinking about it. It's so interesting. Just today I was talking to somebody and I realized, I was like, there's something I'm doing with my body that is communicating to this guy that I don't. That I don't really respect him. And I corrected it. I was like, stop it. Open up. You know what I mean? I was being comedian to him. I was like, oh, yeah. And I was like, what the fuck are about you talking like, open up and all that sort of stuff. But I don't yet have the. The cheat sheet. Meaning. Okay, I'm going to intimidate. Maybe the lurch for. I don't know what the. Do you have that mapped out?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. So. Well, first of all, when it's introduced to student actors for the first time, their brain freezes. It's a very. Actors don't like going into their head. They think that the work comes from the emotions and it can and. And ultimately it needs to. But you'll hear actors go, I'm just gonna feel it, man. I don't want to over prep it. I'm just gonna feel it. I'm just gonna feel it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm gonna get it off my partner. I'm just gonna feel it. Well, if your partner comes in the same way, now you got two people going, I'm waiting for you and you're waiting for me, and I don't know what to do. I'm just gonna react to you. But everybody in hold waiting.

[Pete Holmes]

This is why you can't.

[Jason Alexander]

Nobody's made a decision.

[Pete Holmes]

You can't have two Michael Rapaports.

[Jason Alexander]

You can't play, you know, like. Like the.

[Pete Holmes]

The wild cards. I think he's great. That's why he came to mind.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, but you also.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like, Tom Petty is a great frontman, but he wouldn't be a great member of the choir. You don't want Tom Petty's voice in the choir.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

But you can't necessarily have two wild cards in a scene. You need something to work with for.

[Jason Alexander]

The other person you actually can have. Well, you can't have two unchosen artists in a scene. Somebody's gonna have to make choices. If you have two unchosen artists in the scene, a third person's making choices. Either the director or the camera or the. Somebody's making a choice.

[Pete Holmes]

Interesting.

[Jason Alexander]

Somebody has to make a choice. It's the only way you can tell a story. This is how I'm gonna tell it. Yeah. And all we're doing is telling stories. So somebody has to figure out something they want to do to tell the story. Actors don't like it. They don't like going into their head. But when you want. But when you. When you start thinking about this stuff, there are two great books if you're looking for them, and they're almost actor bibles at this point. One is called Actions for Actors. It's just a big old thesaurus about, you know. To attack can also mean to strangle, to mutilate, to. So that, you know, you can go, well, what's the difference between to attack what your body doesn't know what to do with, as opposed to to strangle where you go, oh, now I know exactly what it is.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Oh, interesting.

[Jason Alexander]

I tell. I kind of force my students to do their scenes or monologues only in their actions, no words. If you can't tell your story without the words, then you haven't supplied your part of the work.

[Pete Holmes]

This is like clown college. I know that sounds absurd, but I've been scared of taking a clown class. My friends have done it, and they're like, someone like me, I'd start talking that they'd just be like, stop talking.

[Jason Alexander]

I'd be like, but clown college is scary because it's not just about intention. It's about. It's the thing that makes comedic comedians and comedic actors who are good at it, they have this extra little thing. It's not just about making choices. Something's telling you how to make a funny choice. Choice.

[Pete Holmes]

A funny choice.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. And so that's the problem with clown college is you go, am I funny? Am I funny? Am I a funny clown?

[Pete Holmes]

And now you're getting into my ego. And that's why I'm terrified of it. If somebody told me I wasn't funny, I'd be like, I will now prove you wrong in some absurd way.

[Jason Alexander]

You go. You'll go to anything in order to get the laugh. When for the character, the laugh is not the thing they want. Right? That's the observer. That's what somebody tell me what?

[Pete Holmes]

I've had to cry on camera. And somebody told me, maybe my acting coach, Karen. She was like, the interesting thing about crying is you have to cry. This is very crude. You have to look like you don't want to cry. Nobody wants to cry.

[Jason Alexander]

Only actors cry. Only actors go, I'm crying. That's great. People in real Life will do anything to not be seen crying. Yes. Anything. That's the most humiliating thing in the world.

[Pete Holmes]

But they're like, there's a twinkle.

[Jason Alexander]

Like, I'm doing it. You bet.

[Pete Holmes]

Like a. Like right down the lens. Like a perfect year. You're so happy it happened.

[Jason Alexander]

There was a. I had a great moment about that. I was doing a movie called Love, Valor, Compassion, and a really brilliant director, a guy named Joe Mantello, who does mostly theater, mostly in New York, very little film. It was one of his. I think it may be his only film, but. And I had a big. A big monologue, a big aria, man. It's so emotional about the tragedy that my lover is dying and he has AIDS and nobody cares, and I have AIDS and I'm gonna die and nobody, you know. And at the very end of the monologue, the guy I'm talking to, I turned to and I go, do you promise me that you will be there when it's my turn, that your. Your face will be the last face I see? Right. And I'm prepping this thing and I, man, I want to. I want to cry, I want to rage. I want to do. And Joe very smartly lets me do three, four takes. And it's all working. I'm crying, I'm. You know, it's great. Yeah. And he comes in around take five and he goes, we got it. It's great. We got it. I want to do one more. I just want to do something. You're not angry? You're not scared? You're not. Don't worry about that stuff. You just really want. You don't want to be alone when you die. And you know that he can't look at that stuff. So really make him promise. Just use the whole monologue to get him to promise to do that. And I go, joe, come on. That's like one. You want me to play one color, one note for a two page model, I guess. Don't worry, we got it. We got it. This is just like a piece of something. Just a piece.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

So I go, all right, listen, he's a great director. I'm going to trust him. And I go, take a minute and then we do the scene and I. And I stop worrying about everything else. And I go, I'm going to make you promise that you're going to be there. I'm going to say this whole thing to you. So you promise. The actor I'm working with is a wonderful actor named Steven Spinella. And we get to the end of the Monologue. And I'm emotional. I've gone through some stuff. I'm not quite the weeping, but for the first time, he's crying. Oh, wow. And we go, cut. And Joe comes out from behind the camera like, you know, cat that swallowed the canary. And he goes. And I go, that's the take, isn't it? And he goes, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And he's absolutely right. Because it was all about Steven Spinella. It was all about getting the thing my character needed. My character didn't need to be seen crying. My character didn't need to be seen screaming. He needed to feel connected and not alone and not lost.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And that's. And when. When he started working for that. So I always say to my students who have emotional scenes, it's a. It's a rough way of saying it, but I go, I don't really care what you feel. I care what you make him feel. Because in doing that, I promise you, you will feel. You can't play an action and be devoid of the emotion that triggers that action.

[Pete Holmes]

I really feel like it goes back to our thoughts about a good life. The service being outward, not having a panic attack.

[Jason Alexander]

There is a theme.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a theme.

[Jason Alexander]

Look at us.

[Pete Holmes]

But I think all of this inwardness, even we say this on the pod all the time, but even look at how shiny I am. Is a lonely place.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because. Because you're defined by how you feel about me. I'm thinking about me. I'm trying to make you think about me. And. And it's dangerous. We love it in this country. You know, not just this country, but, you know, the Tony Stark thing. Be the guy with the iron suit. No one can hurt him. And everyone wants to be him and women want to be with him and all that stuff. But I'm like, I actually think it's. The heroes are your mom.

[Jason Alexander]

I agree.

[Pete Holmes]

And David Lee Roth and you teaching this stuff. Meaning there's a whole. It doesn't all have to be Mother Teresa or nothing, but, like, it's outwardness.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's get weird.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Wasn't it the Lenny Bruce routine about the Lone Ranger? In the Lone Ranger routine, he used to do a thing about the Lone Ranger. Doesn't stick around for a thank you. The whole crowd was angry because what's with him? Hi ho, silver and a bullet and he's gone. You can't stay. You can't get a thank you. You can't give him a thank you. What kind of a person is this? You can't give a thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

That's hilarious.

[Jason Alexander]

Let's. Let's lynch this bastard.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, truly great.

[Jason Alexander]

And it's. But that's kind of what I mean. I'd like to say this is how I roll. I'm sure it's not, but there is a joy to going. You already thanked me by participating. I had a great time doing this with you. That was the joy. It doesn't need. It's like, oh, God, this is going to sound like such a pat on my back. And I don't mean it to, but it was one of the moments where I realized I learned something. And it was when my. My. My dear friend Julia Louis Dreyfus was getting her star on the Walk of Fame, and I. And she asked if I would come and be part of it. And I did, and it was lovely, and I was thrilled to be there. And I. I came home and my boys were young teenagers at the time, and they said, dad, do you have one? I went, nope. They go, well, don't you want one? And I went, you know, honestly, I didn't quite think about it. I guess if someone handed it to me, I would take it. But I said, but here's the crazy thing, guys. I could take you up there. We can walk blocks. You won't know any of those names. I mean, you know, they were famous. It's the Walk of Fame. You won't know those names. Yeah. And I said to them, gil Dingler.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, right.

[Jason Alexander]

But. And this is the moment. That kind of where they went, huh? I said, you know, honest to God, in this moment, I can tell you, when I'm gone, there are only two people in the world I care if and how they remember me. I'm looking at both of them. Oh, my gosh. I go, I don't. I mean, I would like to have gone out with people going, I'm glad he was on the planet. I got something from that guy. Yeah, but when they go, 20 years from now, you don't want them watching your movies. And I go, yeah, God bless. They watch them, they want. I. I said, I don't. Any movie I've made doesn't need to be here 20 years.

[Pete Holmes]

Ghost Alexander can come out of curtains, you know. Oh, Pretty Woman.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, exactly. Because that holds up well.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, man, it's the cigarette case and a toothy grip. That's all we need. No, that's beautiful. I also loved if you were giving them that speech. And we hear in the background, there's a truck, like Beep, beep, beep. And they're unloading like a George Costanza bronze statue. The only people I care about, beep, beep, beep. They're lowering it.

[Jason Alexander]

My son and I, my son Gabe is an actor and he's wonderful. And we did a short lived series for Freeform called Dinner with dad. It was just these, these conversations about life in the business from. And he played him and I played me and my perspective, his perspective. And there's one where we got into a conversation about what name dad are you going to have on your tombstone? Because my real name is J. Scott Greenspan, it's not Jason Alexander. And I go, I don't know, I guess it'd be like an aka, you know. He went, you're going to put an ak. And it was like, these are improv conversations. And we're like, that's a really good question. Do I care?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

If somebody walks by that stone and goes, oh, he's that guy. How does that serve me?

[Pete Holmes]

This is literally the answer to the question, when does it stop? When's it? So I'm at a. I've told this story before, but I want to tell it to you. I'm at a Ram Dass retreat. I love Ram Dass.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, Ram Dass. Wow, you are hardcore, man.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not Alan, by God. Yeah, I was at a Ram Dass thing and I was, it was like doing late night. It was at the retreat and they asked me if I wanted to go up on stage and, and, and speak, but as like a spiritual person. I was like, oh, not to talk about comedy, but to like do this, wear this other hat. And this is my biggest other passion. And Ram Dass is in the audience and, and, and there. Ann. No, it wasn't Anne Lamont. That was the year I did. So I did it that another time. Ram Dass was not in the audience. But anyway, here's my guy, my homeboy. Ram Dass changed my life. And I'm watching the talk and I'm gonna be brought on at the end. And I'm sitting there going like, nobody's, nobody's nailing this. Like, as a spiritual showman, I'm like that people are asking questions. I know what Ram Dass in 1978 would have said. I could quote it verbatim. He's there. He's like a father figure to me. I'm like, I'm gonna quote it. Like, I'm gonna go up. Not only am I gonna go up on stage and take new questions, I'M gonna go back and be like. I also feel like this could have been said. This could have been said. Like a flourish, like a big, you know, like a medley. Like, I'm gonna. All the hits, just the choruses of every great musical number Ram Dass has ever performed. And of course, the fantasy is like, play it out now. I do this, I go, what do you think is gonna happen? He's gonna be like, you're my chosen boy. No one has understood I love you. And then. And then the question after that is like, and then what?

[Jason Alexander]

You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

And then what? Then you'll feel okay. I know. To ask those questions now, to play it out now.

[Jason Alexander]

Right?

[Pete Holmes]

And to get honest about what you want. Like, what do you really want and why do you want it? But back then, I really just wanted to razzle dazzle my. My teacher.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And just like a late night show, it's getting later, it's getting later, it's getting later. The guy on stage goes, we've run out of time. And I'm like, run out of time. This is being run like Haight Ashbury. Like it was sloppy, was slow. You can hear the ceiling fan. That's not good showbiz if you can hear the ceiling fan. I'd get this thing popping. So anyway, I'm bumped, basically. And I say to David Nichter and this Buddhist teacher who I love, and I. He's also like a mentor to me. And I go, you know, we're in a spiritual environment. We're on a retreat for sake. But I'm just like, I can be honest with him. Like you with Mr. Moss, right? And I'm just like these, like, they asked me to be here. It's like disrespectful. I'm sitting here the whole time. Ram Dass was there. Like, I'm having a good complaint in a trusted place. Wouldn't do it publicly, but I'm doing it. And he just goes, pete, when's it going to be enough? And that's one of the greatest teachings of my life. When's it going to be enough?

[Jason Alexander]

That's right.

[Pete Holmes]

You with your son, you're going to do it. It's Jerry eating fries. You're going to do an aka it belongs in the diner.

[Jason Alexander]

Gabe needs to know.

[Pete Holmes]

That was premium content.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

AKA like, when's it gonna be enough? But you realized it's enough. Walk of fame. What, so a dog can poop on your name?

[Jason Alexander]

I mean, listen, it's a lovely thing. I know it's usually done. Generally, it's done as a. As a. As a.

[Pete Holmes]

Tip of the cap.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, exactly. And I go, okay, I got a lot of those. I. You know, people have been very nice to me. Yeah. Very, very nice. Disproportionately blessed.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jason Alexander]

I don't know that I need the thing in the sidewalk. If somebody wants to give it to me, I'll show up.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jason Alexander]

And I will make fun of it, because that's what we do in Jersey.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jason Alexander]

And then I'll go home. And when they go, you got a star. Yes, I do. It's outside a porn shop on Hollywood and Lister.

[Pete Holmes]

All right, let's.

[Jason Alexander]

Let's.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's do some weird questions. I really want to get some things you've never been asked stuff. Here's one. And feel free to dodge it. One time I was telling a sound guy that I was nervous about emf. I. I'm kind of EMF thing over there. And he said, Jason Alexander, is that way. Is that something you've ever talked about?

[Jason Alexander]

No, my wife, so. My wife.

[Pete Holmes]

Because we celebrate weird things, and that's. Yeah, that's interesting.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

So just know the tone.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm asking my wife. For a long time, we had five years of unexplainable infertility. We took every test, and they went, are you fucking? Because we don't.

[Pete Holmes]

Are you sure you're fucking?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. And one of the things that she was sure of is in our old New York apartment, a very thin New York City apartment wall separated the headboard of our bed and the back of our refrigerator. And she was convinced that the EMF radiation coming from the refrigerator was somehow having an effect on electromagnetic. Right. And so we. She got the meters, and you know.

[Pete Holmes]

Who to agree with you, by the way. Sad guru, He's. He's like, you should face to the. I forget what it was. I think it might be the east, but it's something about the magnetic rotation of the earth and the blood and the iron in your blood. He. He's on this tip. Keep going.

[Jason Alexander]

So. So my wife got me into it, and for a time there, we had someone wait, did you move it? And we moved the bed.

[Pete Holmes]

And then baby.

[Jason Alexander]

No, but. Babies, yes, but not. Not because of that. We. Someone came out to our house when we bought it, and they went through with the meters and said, oh, you got to move this here and a pipe here and a thing here. And then it all came to a head. Come back to Marty Short, who I'm sure Must have told great stories about this. She got concerned about the, the microphones, the mic packs. Yeah. So my wife made me, she got made for me cotton undershirts that had had a blocking material so that I could put on the undershirt. You're talking to a guy on the outside.

[Pete Holmes]

Ordered one of those hats.

[Jason Alexander]

There you go.

[Pete Holmes]

So you, you, so you have a shirt to block it.

[Jason Alexander]

I did. I, you know, she has become lax about it and therefore I have become lax about it. But we were for a while. They're very serious about it.

[Pete Holmes]

It's interesting, we're back to the mercury pooling. I'm not saying it's not something worthy of anxiety but like sometimes I get that way I'll become obsessed and be kind of like how do we get, get this out of our lives?

[Jason Alexander]

Every young person I know, everyone under 30 that I know, their anxiety levels are off the charts. There's, there's the level of anxiety and depressive related mental health that's either come out of the darkness and we're just talking about it more or it's more profound. These friggin phones that we wear on our, in our pockets, next to our testicles, next to our kidneys, next to.

[Pete Holmes]

Our brain for a woman, next to.

[Jason Alexander]

Their breast, next to their ovaries.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm not sure that we shouldn't be taking it more seriously. People there were, there were scientists talking about that stuff with much more.

[Pete Holmes]

And then it went away.

[Jason Alexander]

And then it went away and either the research went well, it does something, but we don't know what. We can't say that it's a bad thing. Yeah, but nobody's even looking. As far as I know, nobody's looking at it anymore. And I, we took a trip exactly a year ago. My family and my daughter in law's family, we went rafting for eight days in the Grand Canyon. So no cell signal, no nothing.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow, man, you were back.

[Jason Alexander]

That was bliss.

[Pete Holmes]

You were back.

[Jason Alexander]

That was bliss. Yeah, there was, there was none of this stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

There's that for sure. And then there's also, and I'm not breaking any new ground here, but the book selfie that I'm reading is all about why is everyone, everyone's so depressed. Why is everyone so anxious? Obviously self obsession and what does social media have to do about that? But when you're raised with it. I'm trying to work on this bit about how the world is catching up to how I was as a fundamentalist Christian where it's like we'll send you to hell. Like, if you make a mistake, we'll send you to hell. And I go, this is the only joke in it, which is why I haven't done it. I go, the worst part is that hell's real. Like, meaning your kids. My kids are growing up in a place where they see, by the way, this is not sympathizing with, with people who've done terrible things. I'm talking about little mistakes. Bad, bad things you post or whatever it is. So please don't think I'm apologizing for.

[Jason Alexander]

Truly horrible bad behavior.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just saying, you see what happens? You make a mistake.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I was like, welcome to my world. You're just, you're just creating a fundamentalist environment. And also church lobby, khakis, smile. We play a part, you play church, Pete. Oh, God bless you, Jason. As soon as I get in my car, I'm like, fucking phony, you know, to myself, it's private. Nobody's that big of a phony that they would just start saying that. Some of us were. But I'm like, that's Instagram. It's like in Naples or whatever. And it's like, I've been to Naples. The first day, jet lagged. You're not happy. Takes at my age, first three days of the vacation are just acclimating to being on vacation.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

But the photos are like crab faced. Yeah, that's also a religious kind of thing where it's like, just look like you're holy, pretend like you're happy, Pretend like you're holy. And these machines. So in the book Selfie, I'm recommending it, they talk about the kids and the pressure where they even know that they're full of shit. And they know that they're full of shit. Nobody's actually happy. You're just looking happy. But it doesn't matter. Knowing that it's not real doesn't help. We're still human animals. We're still seeing images. Images shape your reality. Look to Jung and Freud for other examples of. They have so many studies of like showing someone an image and what it does to you internally. And now what you were doing for eight days. Not just no emf, not just no cell or Internet, no images. Imagine that.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

Just reality.

[Jason Alexander]

That's what I love about this podcast.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why I hated that my phone ring two hours, where this can just be the image, just reality. Sorry, you got me on one of my topics.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, just on, on that topic, you know, when I, when I knew the modern world was going to take a turn for the. For the worse. And I can't remember the day. I remember it has to be 12 years ago, watching something on CNN. A news story. A news story, yeah. Cut back to Wolf Blitzer. And he goes, we want to know what you think, so tweet us at.

[Pete Holmes]

And I go, you want to know what we think?

[Jason Alexander]

What does it matter what I think? It's a news story. It's. It's a factual event. Why? Why does my take on it? And I went, are people gonna write in and tweet in about this? And that's when I went, it's over. We're done, Jay. We're done.

[Pete Holmes]

This is the highest compliment I can give an observation. It's ready for the stage.

[Jason Alexander]

It's ready to go.

[Pete Holmes]

That's when I knew we were done.

[Jason Alexander]

We're done.

[Pete Holmes]

It's so right. And as soon as we let in those voices, your brain. You, Jason Alexander, J.

[Jason Alexander]

Green. Green. Greenspan.

[Pete Holmes]

Greenspan.

[Jason Alexander]

Forgive. Think Alan.

[Pete Holmes]

Got it locked in. You give me a compliment. You're an accomplished actor. All these things that should mean a lot, but I have to sit with it. But this guy on the street, basically driving by in a bus, yells out the window, you look like you're wearing a travel pillow. It's a burn. I wrote for myself. And I. I take you both as equal. You know, there's no. What is this guy, by the way? Beloved child of God? I'm just saying, there's credentials, there's the news, there's a doctor. This guy was like, you should get a.

[Jason Alexander]

What?

[Pete Holmes]

The plaque test?

[Jason Alexander]

You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

You got that from a doctor. That should matter more. No new ground. Here's some other things. Have you ever seen not just a ghost or ufo, but anything you can't explain.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Hit it. Give me one.

[Jason Alexander]

So this is the one and only time that I'm aware of that I actually called to go. We're just checking. Do you want to comment on this? And I had to go kind of. You got it right.

[Pete Holmes]

I was.

[Jason Alexander]

I was doing a movie.

[Pete Holmes]

I did have lunch.

[Jason Alexander]

I was doing that. That Joe Mantello movie. Whoa. And they. We were shooting a little bit north of Montreal, Canada, and the production put myself and my family in this lovely house. I can't believe I'm telling this story in this house. You know, it was kind of a bigger house than what we needed. And at some point, I think they had said maybe it had been an embassy or something like that. Nothing spooky about the House. But we noticed, you know, some weird things. Like my. My wife is very sensitive to smells, so she doesn't wear cologne. I don't wear cologne. We had a natural.

[Pete Holmes]

I almost said, and refrigerators, and then the refrigerator kicked on. Weird.

[Jason Alexander]

But there would be. There would. At night, there would be, like, a perfume scent. Oh, yeah, that's got me.

[Pete Holmes]

Sorry, Jay.

[Jason Alexander]

At night, all of a sudden, this has to be a perfume scent. And it would travel from, like, one room to another. That's weird. Okay. And then classic ghost. Also at night, we would think we were hearing whispering in French. And we're going. And we're going, what was that? And we couldn't. And we couldn't source them. We thought maybe it's a radio frequency. I mean, we're Montreal people speak French. Yeah. So maybe we're picking up a radio frequency. Couldn't figure that out. The nanny was coming down the stairs one day, and she's carrying my. My. My younger son was an infant at the time. And she lunges forward on the staircase. She protects the baby, but she kind of bangs up her arms. And she goes, I got pushed. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

By a French Canadian.

[Jason Alexander]

And then the way the. The way the house was set up, my wife and I were in a bedroom. My. My younger son, an infant, was in the room with us, and my older son was in the room next door. And then this nanny and this nanny helper were staying at the other end of the hallway, down a significant hallway and bedrooms at the other end. And the. This one nanny that was with us, we had. She had been with us for three years already. Great girl. You know, nothing. She. Not a drinker. Not a drink. And we come down to breakfast one day, and she says to me, I know the answer to this, but you wouldn't have had any reason. To me, she says, you wouldn't have had any reason to be in our rooms last night, would you? Absolutely not. Unless it was on fire. There's no reason I would be down in your room. She went, I know that. But we both. And they were in separate rooms. They said, we both felt like there was a man in our room last night. And, like. Okay, so now that's all the tee up, too. Yeah. I have an early call one morning for the movie, like a 5am pickup. I come out the bedroom door, and the nanny that's been with us is sitting on the floor outside in her. In her pajamas with a blanket wrapped around her, pale as convenient. She goes, I'm not staying in this house. And she swears that there was a male presence in her room, that she heard him laugh, that it. That there was a. Though the windows were closed, there was enough of a gust that it blew a lamp off the bedside table and that there was this mist. And this mist swirled and kind of came at her, and she felt flushed and abused. And then the minute it stopped, the lamp came on, on the floor and she went. She. I said, you were attacked by the undead. Is that what happened? She went, I don't know, but I'm not staying in this house. And I had to call the production and go, thank you for this lovely house. We have to go to the Holiday Inn, and we need to go today.

[Pete Holmes]

Holiday Inn. No ghosts.

[Jason Alexander]

We may have a ghosty thing here. And then somebody must have told the Inquirer, and they called and said, is this true? And I went, well, normally I tell you guys to screw off, but, yeah, that's kind of what we think happens. So there's that. I mean, that's probably the. The.

[Pete Holmes]

There's that. Yeah, that's a part.

[Jason Alexander]

But I didn't, you know, I didn't actually see it. So I could hear the voices and I could smell the perfume and. But everything else was happening to other people and I was near it. But I haven't. No, I would love to, actually. I love alien talk and UFO talk.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, really?

[Jason Alexander]

And I'm a big believer in the possibility that was expressed in Chariot of the Gods and things like that. About that. A lot of our mythologies and maybe even some of our religions are all our interpretations of, you know, aliens being here, trying to do things with and for the planet and for the species and speed up agriculture. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, and that was our. So I love that stuff, but I've never seen anything. I love when we were in the Grand Canyon there, you know, I would watch the night sky because it's true. Dark sky. And you just see things that are amazing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And I would, you know, stare up sometimes and you'd see points of light, you know, moving in weird ways. And you go, is that. Could that be a thing? But, you know, it's also. Who knows? But I'd love to say just looking.

[Pete Holmes]

At a bunch of who knows, that's what makes the night sky so tricky, is you're looking at a bunch of who knows? Looking for other. Who knows.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. You know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

But you're like, I already don't understand this, but is there something else I don't understand? Moving through the thing.

[Jason Alexander]

I'll tell you the great thing though, if you do, if this is my big, my big push for go do this trip. It's so clear and it's so brilliant that you can lay there and you see satellites go by. We saw the, the space station go by and you could see it plain as day. You go, oh, sure, that's that shape. And you hear and you, and you. Oh my God. Serenity now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, right.

[Jason Alexander]

Sure. You know, Houston, we just had a spotting of him.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow. No, that. I would love to do that. I wonder what the right age for my daughter is. Well, that's, you know, I, we don't have to talk about that.

[Jason Alexander]

But moving where?

[Pete Holmes]

We moved north of the city. Seeing the moon every day, I'm just like, right, Oh, I didn't know I needed the moon. Turns out I need the moon. Any psychics, I have to imagine it'd be fun for you to call a psychic and they tell you something. You are so familiar to me and.

[Jason Alexander]

Not the characters you play.

[Pete Holmes]

There's a weird, I'm like, I know this guy.

[Jason Alexander]

So we've, we've, we had. This is the most profound one. So like I said, my wife and I had five years of unexplainable infertility. Both my boys are in vitro. We had moved to la, we had done some reproductive stuff. We had tried a cycle or two in New York and nothing happened. And we had come out to LA and we just, we weren't, we didn't know what we were going to do. And we heard of a couple doctors and we, so we met a couple of fertility doctors and there's one guy that we really liked a lot. And then we had reason to go back to New York before we made any decision. And my mother in law is the one who loves the psychics. She's really into the psychics. She said, you have to go see Frank Andrews. Frank Andrews has passed away since then. But Frank Andrews was a man, I don't think he was five feet tall. He was like Truman Capote. He was just had this little southern kind of, you know, affect thing. And he had a brownstone down in the, in the village and he raised Papillon dogs. So he had these little Papillon dogs, right? Great. On a salad and, and his thing.

[Pete Holmes]

Was it just sounded like a type of pepper.

[Jason Alexander]

Sorry, can I get that with that extra crispy? And he says, we come in and he doesn't know because Seinfeld wasn't a thing yet. And he didn't have. And even if he knew who I Was we weren't necessarily there for anything other than go see a psychic. What a lark, you know, not knowing what he's going to talk about. And we get into his room and he goes, this is the strangest thing because I normally, I do palms and I do tarot and I don't. I'm not a medium. He goes, you know, I. I invest in things like I look at somebody's hand and see if there's anything, you know, he said. But it's like I'm hearing a voice and I just have to tell you what I'm hearing. Maybe it'll mean something to you. You've been working on a project for a while and it hasn't gone well. And you've just taken some meetings and you've met someone named Peter or Paul. I get those confused. And I think it may be a last name like Peterson or Peterman or something like that. And the voice is saying, if you do the project with them, it'll be successful. And the guy that we had liked was a guy named Dr. Richard Paulson. And we went, that's really weird. And we came back and we signed up with Dr. Richard Paulson and he made my sons when nobody else could. And that was a thing where we went, well, what is that all about? Where did that come from? So, yeah, I mean, once or twice there's been. And I listen. I'm in the magic world. I know how fake psychics do a lot of their stuff, but that was one of those things where there was more for him to lose than gain. And it wasn't like this. The letter G mean anything to you? It wasn't that shit.

[Pete Holmes]

Cold.

[Jason Alexander]

It was like I'm hearing Peter or Paul and I think it's like a last name like Peterson or.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't even normally do that. Right. It has all the earmarks of authenticity. Very cool.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

And then he went and buy your mother in law a house. Buy her a house.

[Jason Alexander]

Burned out in Los Angeles, but you're.

[Pete Holmes]

Going to want to buy her a house.

[Jason Alexander]

No, he was, he was very cool.

[Pete Holmes]

And we're sort of running close to the time here. Not we don't. I just want to be respectful of your time.

[Jason Alexander]

What, you don't edit. Oh, for God's sake. We don't have God's sake.

[Pete Holmes]

There's no edits here.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, my Lord.

[Pete Holmes]

Any framework for the meaning of life? I know that's a heavy question. The meaning of life here with you. Meaning any, any deity, any structure. When you die, do you Think it's over. You just told me a story about. I mean, it's so easy to think that that was a soul brokering the deal for the souls of your son.

[Jason Alexander]

Sure, sure.

[Pete Holmes]

From a pre birth place, of course. I don't think any of this is literally true. I think it's all happening kind of all at once, basically. That's one of the fun things that Rupert Spiro taught me. It's like, like time is how eternity constricted into the shape of a human perceives eternity as time. But it's really all just.

[Jason Alexander]

Okay, you know what I mean? So said, I've never been high, but I'm about to get.

[Pete Holmes]

So what I'm saying is it doesn't need to be like how we tell stories. There's a pre birth area over here and there's your boys. And they're like, well, let's tell them to go to that doctor. So they're boys. But it makes me wonder, do you have any story that you like or a framework that you like for the meaning of this?

[Jason Alexander]

I will tell you two, two anecdotes that sort of sum up where I am in my questioning of what is it all out there? When my first son was born, he had some sort of bronchial infection. He spent his first 10 days in the intensive care unit and he got a little better before he got. It got a little worse before he got better. And when we didn't know what was going to happen, I found myself in the chapel. And I'm not a religious person, so I will start with that. And talking to God and saying this might be a twofer. I don't know if I can survive getting choked up. I don't know if I would survive if you take him, please don't do this. He's a rock. He's never been sick a day in his life. He's great. But when I tell that story, I go, you know, I've never had a suicidal thought. I'm nobody's hero. I had just met this man. Why would I do that for a stranger? I mean, yes, there's biology, yes, there's chemistry. I get it. We're animals. And in nature parents protect their babies, but they don't throw themselves off a cliff for their babies. What was that about? Was this a soul that I had known in some way, shape or form before because he didn't feel like a stranger to me and that his, his. The loss of him would be too costly. So that's one story. And then that's Beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

I feel like we have to unpack.

[Jason Alexander]

That a little bit. Oh, really?

[Pete Holmes]

That might be yours. Well, it's just beautiful. First of all, it's so beautiful. It's silly to do a bit. The chapel in hospitals, that's gotta be cedar Sight. A serious, serious place. And to throw out that earnest of a prayer when you're not even a praying person.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, that's not my relationship.

[Pete Holmes]

And when you said a twofer, you meant, like, I might go.

[Jason Alexander]

I don't know if I'll survive it. Right. It may be more than I can bear. Yeah. We worked so hard to get this child.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you were also transformed by love. You saw a good definition for love is. Is seeing yourself in the other, recognizing there's. As doctor, doctor Father Greg taught me there's no sunlight between us. We're so close. There's no sunlight between us. But that's true of.

[Jason Alexander]

Of us.

[Pete Holmes]

But you wreck. Sometimes the kids are the ones that unlock the place in us where we always were in love.

[Jason Alexander]

And if there is truth to the connection of. Are we soulmates? I mean, I. I just understand that there was a. Some book I had read sometimes said that soul mates are literally fragments of one giant soul that recognize each other and go, oh, we're part of the. That's you I'm recognizing. Yeah, but the. But what I would tell my kids when they were little about, you know, death and dying, when that would come up. And I'd say, well, because they go, I made them. You know, we're. I grew up Jewish. I'm not a practicing Jew. I mean, culturally, you can't wipe it off me, nor would I ever choose to. Yeah, but we're not religious Jews. But we made my sons get bar mitzvah because I went, there are people that will kill you because you're a Jew. You might as well know what you're dying for. So. Oh, my God. And I also said, you know, it's your choice. I chose. It's not the way I roll. But you. You should hear about it.

[Pete Holmes]

We're chosen. You choose. Choose right.

[Jason Alexander]

Choose. Make a choice. You're the chosen people.

[Pete Holmes]

Actors act chosen shoes.

[Jason Alexander]

So they would ask about death and dying. And I go, well, here's. Here's what I'll tell you. I don't know. Is there a God? I don't know. I said, I've watched two people take their last breath. The moment before that last breath, they are there. And the moment after that, when my father died, I literally went. As if I could. I Mean, there's something about the exhalation of that breath where I went, whoa. And just kind of tracked it with my eyes. And, you know, he's hooked up to a thing that's reading the electrical impulses of his body. They're there. He's generating power. Yeah. Takes a breath. Gone. And science tells us you cannot create or destroy energy. You can only change it. So I look at that and I go, well, what did that energy become? Where did it go? Is it attracted to, like, energy? Does it. Does it become air molecules? Does it become water molecules? I mean, whatever it is, I don't. So to me, I. Having seen that, I tend to feel like whatever that is has soul connection on it. I don't know if it's sentient. I don't know if it has any trace of our personalities or our histories or our memories or our growth or anything. I just think it's a living energy and something happens to it. So then I go and I think about God.

[Pete Holmes]

Another way to put it would be.

[Jason Alexander]

Nothing happens to it or nothing happens to it. That's very interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. Yes. Yes or no?

[Jason Alexander]

But is it?

[Pete Holmes]

Is it?

[Jason Alexander]

Is it?

[Pete Holmes]

Isn't it? Tell me.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, so I have trouble believing. I'll go this way. Big Bang is what's created the universe. Big Bang. What was there before the Big Bang? What was the moment? What made the Big Bang? There was nothing. Then there was a Big Bang. Something made a Big Bang. I have trouble getting away from the notion of a creator. A creator. I don't know that it's sentient. I don't know that it's living in the way we think of living. I don't think of it as the biblical God that I have to talk to and ask for presents and make promises. I don't think that's our relationship. I think the universe was created. I think it was created for purpose. And I think we are part of the exploration of that purpose and that our lives, if nothing else, return information and.

[Pete Holmes]

To that source.

[Jason Alexander]

To that source. And that eventually time, space, physical time, space, will be done. At some point, the universe will be done. But I don't think the Creator comes from this time, space, reality. I think the creator lives outside of that reality. And so there are other realities. There are other. What do you want to call it? Dimensions? There are other. There are other somethings. Maybe when we go, we're called back to that. I don't know. But I try to think about. You create something in the hopes that it will have reason and it will be a good thing. You don't knowingly create bad things. Very rare. So I tend. Even though I'm not a religious person, people say to me, well, how do you know right from wrong? How do you know good from bad? If something is in the service of creation that does not destroy, that does not impede, that does not block, that does not separate, that does not divide, I tend to think it's in the service of creation and therefore must be in the service of the Creator and everything that is not that. You can call it evil. I don't know that it's evil, but it's just not in the service of its intended purpose.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not in the flow. It's not right harmony.

[Jason Alexander]

It's not in the flow. Yeah. And that's. That's kind of where my spirituality lies. And it's. It's. I don't know. It's. So when I talk to somebody like Bill Maher who goes, you don't really believe that, do you? Go, yeah, I'm too scared to not believe it. I'd like to believe that it doesn't have to be me, but I'd like to believe that there's a reason me existed other than to fill up space for a period of time.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

There must be something more to it than that. It doesn't have to be me. It can be just, you know, we waste that. You. We put this in your flesh and blood, and now we're going to take it back and make it a water molecule. That's great. Something will swim in it. Something will drink it, something up, do something with it. Great. But it's still purposed, you know?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. You might not have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, but you might become a star. Right?

[Jason Alexander]

We are stardust. Do you.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't know. Do you want to do another take so you can give a good answer?

[Jason Alexander]

By the way, the podcast that I'm launching is not like this at all. You're going to be on it eventually.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I'd love to. It is my question, Peter and I understand my joke.

[Jason Alexander]

I do. I. I guess I totally.

[Pete Holmes]

As if written with a feather pen.

[Jason Alexander]

If you have to explain jokes.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay, good.

[Jason Alexander]

We're in big trouble. Good. But, yeah, my friend Peter Tilden and I are launching one on iHeart in November, and it's called really? No, really. And you will almost surely be on it, whether you're on it or not, because it almost always begins with a comedian's joke observation that we go, yeah, what is that? And then it becomes something big picture and we talk to fascinating people that we make fun of throughout the whole thing.

[Pete Holmes]

I can't wait. Really?

[Jason Alexander]

No, really edit that out.

[Pete Holmes]

But I can't wait. Neil Degrasse Tyson had a very similar answer to you too. He's like, I observe a universe that is constantly churning itself. And he's like, when I die, I feasted on the flora and the fauna of this planet. And to return to it and be feasted on. He's like, it's a great privilege to re enter the cycle and all that.

[Jason Alexander]

Stuff that's interesting that that interests me a little less. Yeah, I don't love being a smorgasbord.

[Pete Holmes]

But I don't necessarily want to be fauna. Yeah, you want to be fauna. Yeah, sorry. It's just so hard not to be Seinfeld.

[Jason Alexander]

Would you want to be fauna?

[Pete Holmes]

Gotta go.

[Jason Alexander]

Flora.

[Pete Holmes]

Flora before fauna, never been sicker.

[Jason Alexander]

You do a pretty good Seinfeld, by the way. Thank you very much.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Would you indulge?

[Jason Alexander]

How? How?

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not even going to ask you to do anything. I want you to know, because I wonder. I would wager a lot of money that you've never gotten this. Of all the Seinfeld things, this.

[Jason Alexander]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

You think there's a very good chance you've heard it before?

[Jason Alexander]

No, I think there's. Or I've forgotten it. That's where I was.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I'm not putting you on the spot. Okay, George, your character says, I don't even remember when it was and neither do you. It's fine. But you say, you're serious, aren't you? And you go, you're serious, aren't you? For some reason you really say it like, aren't you? Almost every morning, Valerie and I pour some cereal, get some orange juice and say to our daughter, your cereal, orange juice. And it's just. It's just a joy to tell you that.

[Jason Alexander]

It's one of those things where the.

[Pete Holmes]

Line is, you're serious, aren't you? And you made it funny. I think you're in the Yankees office and they're telling you to leave or something. It doesn't matter. But it's one of those George moments. You go, what? Maybe you showed up even after you were fired and they're like, get out of here.

[Jason Alexander]

And you're like, oh, that wasn't at the Yankees.

[Pete Holmes]

But okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

You know that's a true story.

[Pete Holmes]

Larry David.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Snl.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Just act like you didn't do it.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Kenny Kramer had came up with that.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, let his name never be spoken. And his bus tour of desire.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm just kidding.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

I think about it all the time because I write script and. And I love picking names from my youth. Not that I. I don't really know the Kenny Kramer story, but I'm just sort of like, you got to be careful with the names that you pick.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, it's very true.

[Pete Holmes]

But it couldn't be Kessler. It couldn't have been Kessler.

[Jason Alexander]

Started as guessing.

[Pete Holmes]

I know he had a dog too.

[Jason Alexander]

So let me ask you. I'm gonna ask you a question.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jason Alexander]

So the last series you did, you did a season and it went away. How do you. So what's the feeling about them that.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, thank you for asking. It took a. I just called the creator of the show, Mark Gross 2, three nights ago, and we both had the same experience, which was maybe it's a masculine thing. I think all of us do this as a self preservation. When it got canceled, I'm just forward momentum. I'm just like, okay. I've had. I've had the privilege of having several shows be cancelled. It's all part of it, right? It's like Mad Men. The day you sign a client is the day start losing them. It's all part of the event. Means you're in show business. So I have this like wonderful spin doctor technique of like, what a privilege that we got to do it. This is true. We didn't waste a day. We had fun every day. And I've been on other sets. Didn't have the same vibe. We had fun. Like you said about Seinfeld, you're hanging out, watching other people's scenes. I'm pitching jokes to other people. Not just my own joke. When it was okay, yeah, you'd be like, maybe that's me. That pitch me down. Yeah, beautiful. We did not waste it. Then it gets canceled and I spin and then. Meaning make it positive. Just keep moving. I have other projects, other things I want to do, but it's all good. I even said on the podcast, on this podcast, I was like, there's a. There's a fuel to a no. And that is true. You'll work harder, you'll write more. You do these things. And I actually think the bigwigs, the Bezos is the Zuckerbergers or whatever, that don't get a lot of no's. I bet they manufacture no's because they know there's. There's a certain kind of Charge you can only get from someone telling you no. And I really was spinning out. And then I had to go like, what a fucking bummer. Like, I had to own it. I had to go like, that sucked. I didn't know show business could be so simple. And what I mean, simple? I mean, go to the same place. Crashing. We were driving to Long island, you know, in a van, two hour drive and shoot two scenes. That was your day. This was the whole day. Little play, fucking around, getting to know everybody. So I really had to. The real courage or the real strength wasn't suppressing that it was sad. It was owning that it was sad. And I called Mark and I was like, are you ready to talk about. And he was like, I was doing what you were doing. I wasn't being honest about how sad it was because we were a special cast. We loved each other. That sounds like Shoney. Phony. Phony. Shoney. Bony, like show business nonsense. Yeah, like, love you, babe. It wasn't like that.

[Jason Alexander]

No. Sometimes that we had a great fast.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's when we were like, we're not going to come back our way because you have to, like, you almost like you want those shows that everyone hates each other. But. But that's what it was like.

[Jason Alexander]

It's hard. I've. I've had three that have crashed and burned after Seinfeld. Yeah, it's. It's hard. Yeah. You know.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's. It doesn't get easier then.

[Jason Alexander]

No. Because you, you, you know, with Seinfeld, it was actually easier because it wasn't my show. So I, you know, I'm a cog in the wheel. That's all. But when you're. When you're, you know, closer to the hub of the wheel and it doesn't work, you start to go, do I not know good from bad? Am I not funny right? Am I not supposed to? Oh, you know what? It maybe is. Maybe I shouldn't be number one on the call sheet. I should be number three on the call. You start doing all that stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And then, you know, you go through the period of. Well, they're assholes. You go through that period.

[Pete Holmes]

This is morning. Yeah, Morning is.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Denial.

[Jason Alexander]

You bet.

[Pete Holmes]

Maybe, though. Maybe they'll put it on Paramount plus.

[Jason Alexander]

Oh, yeah, they're gonna move us.

[Pete Holmes]

See, that's the thing from the theater.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. My Broadway debut was. Was a. What is now a very famous Stephen Sondheim fail. And as they were putting up the closing notice, they actually said, there's a very good chance we're gonna move to an Off Broadway theater. And I went, why? Why would someone take us from Broadway, where we flopped, and go, you know where it'll work? Smaller theater.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's put this damaged heart in a healthy body.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Basically. I. I never believed that. That's just something that they said, maybe we'll go somewhere else. But I was like, I don't think so, guys. I don't think this is how it works.

[Jason Alexander]

That's. All right. Well, you are a Supremely. I'm gonna be nice to you now. You're a supremely talented man.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, thank you.

[Jason Alexander]

You have made me and my family. Laughs stuff so much with such smart stuff. Thank you. And finish it. You know, you're never gonna finish it. You're never gonna not find places to. To do that. It's just, you know, I hope that there are always places that you go. I. I'm happy to be doing it here and doing it this way.

[Pete Holmes]

Isn't it funny? I. I really appreciate that. And. And, like, the letter you wrote Stephen Sondheim, remember?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I do listen to Inside of you for that story. Cause Mike, what a great guy to put us in touch. What a mensch. Really.

[Jason Alexander]

He's. You know. And I only know him, really. We have yet to. We had one lunch together. But you do click with him pretty fast. He's a really.

[Pete Holmes]

But the fact that he put us in touch, there's some people that are just like, I'm not gonna.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But he knew that the gift is giving it away and putting us in touch. But I had that moment, like Sondheim, when you wrote him that letter, and I never had it. I was a little embarrassed. Valerie, my wife, always says it's not just the. The feeling, it's the shame that you have the feeling. So I was having the feeling, which is an actor cliche, which I was like, am I not done? But like, is it going to be 10 years of wilderness or something? That's never happened to me. I've Tarzan swung from for four things. Basically, four great things. I was like, could this be it? And I'm already doing stuff. But, like, you're wondering what the. So what I'm saying is thank you. That was a long and fumbling way.

[Jason Alexander]

To say thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

And from you, I appreciate it. And to you as well. I have that creator mind. I'm sitting here going, like, you know what? Your problem is not your problem. I'm like, maybe Jason is a great dramatic actor. Obviously you are. Is there, like a Breaking Bad and Then I'm like, you're so charming. This smile. What do you do with that smile? The smile you greeted me with. I was like, whatever it is. And I know you're directing, and I know you're killing it, and you're fulfilled and you're teaching, and it's wonderful. So I'm not trying to fix a problem, but as a show writer, creator, I'm like, what is it?

[Jason Alexander]

Back in a second. If it was the, you know, it's the. It's got to be.

[Pete Holmes]

But it has to be something that addresses that smile. It can't just be. Let's have him be a meth guy. It's got to be the smile too.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. It's like. That's the thing is, like, people do call me to be an actor.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course I said, or.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. But I kind of. Didn't I do that?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And. And who am I doing it with? Because that doesn't sound like. Yeah, it's not that they're good, bad, or experienced or otherwise. It just sounds like they're gonna. They're gonna have a very. I love when I. I. People approach me with something and they go, we just want you to do you. And I go, you don't know who I am.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I'm in therapy.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm just figuring out character that I played is the one that you think is me.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jason Alexander]

You know, because I've even played. Have you done this? Where you play yourself and stuff? Sure. And I go. And I always show up and go, which. Which me are you speaking of?

[Pete Holmes]

Even that isn't me. Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Because I go, that's.

[Pete Holmes]

Even stand up me isn't me.

[Jason Alexander]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

It can't. You think? I mean, it's the closest, but it's.

[Jason Alexander]

Also one that you've created for yourself.

[Pete Holmes]

It's exaggerated.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not. Am I yelling at you right now? You know what I mean? Like Sage Pete. Very, very different from real Pete.

[Jason Alexander]

So, you know, I keep. And I've got a couple of ideas. I got one idea that I think is so good, but it needs a really smart writer. Oh, really? But it's. It's a. When we're not shooting, I'll tell you.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, please, tell me about it. I. There's nothing. When we talk about knowing ourselves, Val helps me with this. She's like, you love writing things. I love getting. I don't know if it's an add. I don't know if I even have add, But I love getting tunnel vision. Somebody just said to me, they Were like, you should write something for you and Maya, because Maya Rudolph did this podcast, and I just took two days. I haven't even told her about it, but I was like, like, okay, it's this. It's based on this couple that I know, like, love it. I get caught in that timeless space.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, that is a gift, to be able to. To get an inspiration like that and execute it.

[Pete Holmes]

That.

[Jason Alexander]

That.

[Pete Holmes]

So you're saying, like, you can memorize a monologue real fast.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And act and create a character. All that stuff. Sorry to make this about me, but that. That is something I've identified. My savant ability. Is that what you said?

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. Is that your thing?

[Pete Holmes]

My savantability?

[Jason Alexander]

Put it on paper quickly.

[Pete Holmes]

If you say, like, I would love. I don't know. I actually believe I could do it as well. Certainly in time. Mike White wrote White Lotus in, like, I think he wrote in a couple weeks. Just got, like, 50 Emmy nominees.

[Jason Alexander]

Knew it, and he just did it.

[Pete Holmes]

There's. There's those of us that like that, like the stories in my life. I get notes on a pilot, and they're like, you should completely change it. Two days later, send it finished. You know what I mean? I like those snowed in a log cabin. Like, you don't even name the characters. You just name them Bill James, because you don't want to waste time going, it's a waste of time. By time. If I taught a class on writing, I'd go, stop doing this. Jim PowerPoint enters the room. Just name them people you went to high school with and keep moving. Because that's not. It doesn't matter that you have.

[Jason Alexander]

Well, maybe you do. That is. That's a superpower. That is a superpower, because that's where most. I think I can write. Yeah. But to power through the. And then what happens? Well, if they do that, then that's. And I talk myself out of it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Nothing pleases me more. If somebody outlined something with me. I did something with the. The show I'm talking about was with Adam McKay.

[Jason Alexander]

He.

[Pete Holmes]

He outlined. And then when I hand it in, and it's different from the outline because I went into, like, a shamanic fugue state where I was like, it's not that. And you. He doesn't say, why is it different? He just goes, it works. You're like, it's one of the great joys.

[Jason Alexander]

It's one of the great joys.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't mean to make it about me right here.

[Jason Alexander]

No, that's. I asked the question, you know that's fantastic.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you get one more because we ask everybody this question. Okay, I've enjoyed this. I sort of feel like I'm in like, with a high school friend. And I. Before I even said that, I made sure I extricated it from the familiarity, sure of watching you so much. But I'm just like this, love it, feeling it. Can you tell me the time, a time in your life where you laughed so hard you had tears rolling down your cheeks? I always give this little caveat. Doesn't have to be a good story. In fact, I'll settle for how old you are, who you're with. Here are the prompts. Maybe someone farted. Maybe someone fell down. I know you weren't stoned, but.

[Jason Alexander]

I.

[Pete Holmes]

Have to think rehearsing. I have to think flubbing a line.

[Jason Alexander]

There's one moment that's coming to mind that's actually on television. You can see it. It's on a Seinfeld episode. It's just carefully hidden.

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[Jason Alexander]

It's in the Seinfeld episode called the Parking Garage where we can't find our car in a multi story parking garage. Yes. It was the first time we shot the Seinfeld show without a live audience where we actually did it like a movie. You know, we came in and we shot for four days, you know, and they were long days because we did it on our soundstage. And the way that we would go from floor to floor in the parking garage, they'd change it. Change. Move the cars around, change all the signage. And then there were mirrors on the perimeter so that it looked like it kept going and going and going. It was beautifully done, but we're punchy, you know, and we're. We're really. And it's. It's day four and it's the last night. And we are. We're in golden time. I mean, we. We're. We're not getting it done. And it's the last scene. It's. We finally found the car. And now all that has to happen is Kramer has to get. He's been carrying an air conditioner around while looking for things. Got to get the air conditioner in the car. Elaine's got the bag with the two goldfish. I've missed the movie that I'm supposed to go with this wonderful woman that I can't remember what Jerry was trying to get to, but. And all that is left to do is a couple lines. Put the box in the car, get in the car, drive off. That's it. And we are stupid. We're laughing at nothing. Laughing and nothing. Jerry said Julia had a line, what about the little fishes, you know, or something like that. And he said, do it in the cutest voice you can do it in. We'll have a cute contest. And so she's going, you know, now we're all trying to top her. And we're just laughing at nothing. And they're going, action. And we can't get a shot in. And it's two o' clock in the morning, you know. And our director hits the wall and he goes, God damn it, this is it. You gotta do the goddamn scene. And this is it. I don't care what happens. Do it and get the fuck out. And we're. And we're like, you know, we'll. Children chastised by. No, it was Tom Sharonis.

[Pete Holmes]

I was gonna say the sweetest boy.

[Jason Alexander]

Yeah. So we're like, okay, we're in trouble now. Jerry and I basically have our back to the main camera. But Michael is in dead profile and Julia is completely exposed. And Michael's got this box with a real air conditioner in it. Because he want, you know, Mr. Method, he wanted to carry around a real air conditioner.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Alexander]

If you tried to carefully put this box into the trunk of this car, you have about a three quarter of an inch dead zone around it. It's just barely going to fit in this truck. But if you do it, you can get it in. Michael decides after this chastisement that he's going to do a Kramer. He's going to have it come off his shoulder and he's going to. Yeah, yeah. He's gonna get it in the trunk that way. Action. And he goes, yeah, yeah. And he does a thing with his body. Well, of course, the lip of the trunk stops the box dead. And Michael's face keeps going. And he smashes his face into the corner of this box. And he's now split his lip. And he's bleeding from the lip. And there is nothing funnier on the planet. I mean, Jerry and I, you can kind of see our shoulders are going. We're trying to not do anything that's going to ruin this shot. Julia is exposed, right? And she's. She is so ready to laugh, but she's containing it. And to the point where she starts to cry because she's. She's fighting so hard to contain it that the tears are rolling down her eyes. Michael, who never breaks character, looks at her, sees that she's in trouble and ad libs. It's not funny. Elaine, I hurt myself, which is fucking hysterical. We are. I mean, I was so close to having appendicitis from trying to not let the sound of this. Tears rolling down my face. But I'm. The camera can't see me. We get in this car. Jerry and I are in the back. Julia's in the passenger seat, Michael's. It's Michael's car. And we are supposed to start this car and drive off. He turns that key and the fucking thing won't turn over. That car is rocking. Jerry and I are pounding each other in the back seat, screaming, crying, laughing. It is. I mean, I don't. I don't remember when I've laughed that hard. And. And Charonis was good to his word. My Michael. Michael tries to turn the car over three times, steps out of the car, looks off in the distance, steps back in, tries it again. Cut. And that's how the episode ends. We never shot another one after that. But that was. I mean, that was. That was one of those experiences where, you know, I hold that and I go, God, I love those three people. Because to have that moment.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jason Alexander]

And it's just that we're the only ones who know it. We know what that was, you know, and how. How hard. I mean, you've been there where you're not supposed to be laughing. You don't want to ruin a thing, and you just. It was so delicious. So delicious.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, best answer of all time, I think. But also, I just. I really love that Michael said, it's not funny, Elaine. I hurt myself. It's not funny in that moment to be like, you should see the other guy or something dumb to really be like, it's not funny, Elaine. Like to use the name I hurt myself. I hurt myself is the funniest thing you could say.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

As I always say, you could have taken a four hour break. What's the best line? It's not funny, Elaine. I hurt myself.

[Jason Alexander]

I hurt myself to a woman who is weeping. She's laughing so hard.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not funny, Elaine. I hurt myself isn't in the episode, I don't think.

[Jason Alexander]

No, they cut that.

[Pete Holmes]

They cut that.

[Jason Alexander]

I mean, and they managed. Because they, you know, they were rolling three or four cameras. They managed to cut around enough that you don't quite see the tears on Julia's face. But there is a shot of the car rocking where you can see Jerry and me in the backseat smacking each other because we're just.

[Pete Holmes]

I can't. That was again, the Mike Michael Rosenbaum podcast. You tell the story about the writing, the hole in one.

[Jason Alexander]

All the guys, when they were.

[Pete Holmes]

The sea was angry that day. The way that. That manufactured this perfect ending. And the car not starting is also perfect ending.

[Jason Alexander]

Perfect.

[Pete Holmes]

It was discovered on the day.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

You watched and you're like, those are the only way those episodes could have ended.

[Jason Alexander]

Absolutely.

[Pete Holmes]

But that's that sort of kismet and fun and joy and flow that you need. And what a fun and beautiful answer.

[Jason Alexander]

The best. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, tell me the idea. I have a. I have a free couple hours.

[Jason Alexander]

I'm just kidding. You'll love the idea. And if it ever comes to television, you will love the idea. But it's. It's a fun idea. Yeah. I'll tell you in a minute.

[Pete Holmes]

All right, well, we have the guest at the end of the. First of all. Thank you so much. What a joy.

[Jason Alexander]

Thank you. A pleasure.

[Pete Holmes]

Would you say, keep it crispy? It's how we end. The guest says the catchphrase. It doesn't mean anything bad.

[Jason Alexander]

I see that. Keep it crispy. It's how we end. And that's it.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, no one's ever done that.

[Jason Alexander]

I mean it.

[Pete Holmes]

I really mean it. You're serious. Orange juice. Thank you so much, Jay. Thank you.