Calling “Seinfeld” a success story is understating it. But Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on the show in every episode except one, thinks the series’ success might’ve had bad consequences for the TV industry as a whole. In a Charlie Rose interview from 1998 (the same year “Seinfeld” concluded), Alexander walked through the story of how he, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine), and Michael Richards (Kramer) fought for a raise about halfway through the show’s run.
Alexander (who appears thoughtful, soft-spoken, but quietly confident, the complete opposite of the neurotic George) explained how, around season 5 of “Seinfeld,” he, Louis-Dreyfus, and Richards felt “there was no upside” in staying on the show anymore. The success of “Seinfeld” could even be a double-edged sword since they’d be typecast as actors going forward. His fears ended up being founded; of the three, only Louis-Dreyfus has become more than her “Seinfeld” character to the larger public (see her role as Selina Meyer on HBO political satire “Veep,” which received new life when Kamala Harris unexpectedly became the Democratic nominee for President in 2024).
Initially, the three actors tried to get in on the show’s syndication success. Syndication, a lost art in the streaming TV era, is the act of a network essentially leasing out their programming to other stations. If you were part of a popular syndicated show, residuals (compensation for use of a completed work) could be a sweet deal. Multiple TV stations would want to be able to air a show like “Seinfeld” because it would attract a lot of viewers, ergo episodes would be constantly rerun and the residual payments would add up. So the actors were making money from salaries and residuals, but because they knew NBC was making millions of dollars in pure profit for every episode in syndication, the trio asked to receive a percentage of those profits. NBC said no — until it was time to re-up the show for another season.
“I want to leave the most successful half-hour in the history of television knowing that I never have to work again,” said Alexander, so he, Richard, and Louis-Dreyfus presented a “success formula” for what made the show profitable. In their estimation, the three actors them were one-fifth of the success of “Seinfeld,” alongside Jerry Seinfeld himself, co-creator Larry David, the other writers, and everyone else. Their first offer? $1 million, which NBC “laughed” at. The three ultimately agreed to somewhere around $600,000 per episode upfront, which Alexander still feels was “detrimental to television” because it meant actors from less profitable shows wanted salaries comparable to theirs. He specifically cited Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt’s $1 million per episode deal for “Mad About You,” which indeed was reported at the time as part of a trend where TV actors were asking for bigger paychecks (via Entertainment Weekly).
