Updated

Updated · The Daily Beast · Jul 11

Larry David's 7-Episode Series Targets Trump in July 3 Sketch as Obama Helps Shape Show

Updated

Updated · The Daily Beast · Jul 11

Larry David's 7-Episode Series Targets Trump in July 3 Sketch as Obama Helps Shape Show

Q: When a comedy icon and a former president collaborate, whose comedic vision ultimately wins out on set?

Larry David’s comedic vision appears to have had the final say on set. The clearest evidence comes from Jeff Schaffer, the show’s co-creator and director, who described a moment when Barack Obama offered a creative note and David brushed it off. Obama joked that, as president, he listened to advisers; David replied, “Yeah, but I’m the president of this.” That exchange, repeated in multiple accounts of the production, strongly suggests David retained creative authority over tone and execution. That fits the structure of the series itself. “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness” was created and written by David and Schaffer, and its style is unmistakably David’s: petty grievances, social discomfort, improvisational rhythms, and irreverent historical satire. Schaffer has said “there’s a lot of Larry in here,” and the show has widely been described as essentially David’s sensibility applied to American history. Obama was not a passive producer. By Schaffer’s account, he contributed jokes, improvised a line for the finale, appeared on screen, and showed strong comic timing. David himself praised Obama’s ad-libbing and timing. Higher Ground also helped originate and back the project. But the collaboration seems to have worked as a producer-performer partnership in which Obama added ideas and energy, while David controlled the comic voice. In practical terms, Obama influenced the material; Larry David shaped what the show ultimately became.

Q: How did Barack Obama's production company convince TV's greatest curmudgeon to tackle 250 years of American history?

Higher Ground appears to have won Larry David over less by persuading him than by building a project around instincts he already had. The Obamas’ company wanted a major program for America’s 250th anniversary, and David was a natural fit because he had long been interested in history and had the comic habit of finding irritation, absurdity and human pettiness in everything. That match was unusually strong. David was a history major, and Jeff Schaffer said David’s view was that there should be jokes in everything, including the nation’s founding and other landmark moments. The series, subtitled “An Almost History of America,” essentially applies the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” sensibility to 250 years of U.S. history, with David playing selfish, exasperated men across different eras. The collaboration also benefited from personal chemistry. Schaffer described an “incredible” first meeting with Barack Obama, and said Obama was not just a producer in name: he offered creative notes, improvised a joke for the finale, appeared in the premiere, and had an easy comic rapport with David. David himself praised Obama’s timing and ad-libbing. So the answer is that Higher Ground did not so much talk TV’s great curmudgeon into history as recognize that he was already primed for it. The company supplied the national occasion, the platform and a collaborative environment; David supplied the voice, the historical curiosity and the comic edge.

3 articles · Updated · The Daily Beast · Jul 11

A July 3 episode of Larry David’s seven-part series used a George Washington sketch to attack Donald Trump as an “insecure, lying” president who would seek a third term and “even cheat at golf.”
Rob Reiner played Washington, setting up David’s spectator character to imagine a future leader as a “deeply corrupt con man” and “pathological liar” in the show’s sharpest direct political jab.
Jeff Schaffer said Barack Obama, whose Higher Ground produced the series, contributed notes, improvised lines and appears in later sketches, with creative disagreements with David becoming part of the collaboration.
Schaffer said the team placed the sketch on the night before America’s 250th birthday hoping to needle Trump, though he suggested the satire could be missed, as Trump once embraced a 2020 Curb MAGA-hat gag.