No not the sister of Betsy Ross, but the almost wife of George Costanza on Seinfeld. The actress that played her was Heidi Swedberg. She quit acting after three seasons on the show. And I can’t blame her. Just heard a podcast that the cast – the entire cast – hated doing scenes with her for some reason. They didn’t hate the person, just her comic timing or something, but it was a unanimous complaint. Finally Larry David couldn’t take it any more and decided to kill her off in season seven.
Epic scene too. She died from licking toxic glue on her wedding invitations. George insisted they buy the least expensive and also out of stock invitations. Killing her off was the entire arc of the season. Every actor dreaded doing scenes with her. I’ve never seen any evidence of that, but by the time she joined the cast they already had their rhythm and I guess she just didn’t fit in. And she (Heidi) was fully aware of it.
Imagine how uncomfortable it would be to know people dreaded doing time with you? Well I guess we all have a person (s) in our lives we hate being around. That list grows longer over the years, believe me.
So now Heidi Swedberg is a ukulele player. Coaches and performs. She was born in Honolulu and I guess it stuck. She’s never commented about her stint on Seinfeld, merely saying it wasn’t a positive experience. They even kept the actors that played her parents on a couple of seasons after she was gone. Kind of rough, eh?
But I started thinking. There’s a lot of people I absolutely dread being around. Some are relatives, people I worked with, neighbors. There was this woman that always grabbed the same A train downtown to work and then uptown to go home. So we had to walk together to and from the subway, and mother of god the woman could talk. Just no air in between words. A lawyer, too. I’d doing everything I could think of to lose her. Plus she lived on the same floor of my co-op, so even the elevator ride was extra misery.
I’ve gotta pick up some dry cleaning. See you soon.
Oh I’ll wait for you.
Of course there was no dry cleaning. I’d usually walk out empty handed and say it wasn’t ready yet. And one time walking home, she reminded me I had dry cleaning that would probably be ready. I had to coerce the dry cleaner into letting me borrow a few shirts that were bagged up and left behind for a few months. Simply ridiculous.
Gee, those shirts look large for you.
I like ’em that way.
A little intrusive ya think? But back to Susan Ross. Imagine surviving what must have been an arduous screening for the right actor to play the character only to find out ya screwed up, then she pays for your mistake. Well I guess it’s not too uncommon. Think of how many politicians we’ve validated and then dismissed. Maybe we can invoke a new amendment that allows those decisions to be revisited.
Wait a second. We’re already doing that and it’s not going all that well. And the toxic envelope goes to …