Comic legend jerry seinfeld brings a sports-like simplicity to marriage with his new tv show. introducing, for the first time, the marriage referee. starring couples who fight funny

Comic legend jerry seinfeld brings a sports-like simplicity to marriage with his new tv show. introducing, for the first time, the marriage referee. starring couples who fight funny

So what do you and your wife Jessica fight about? And what annoys you about her?

There's only one thing. I don't think it's a good enough issue for the show but whenever we go to the theatre I get very nervous about being late because I'm a well-known person and I hate to go into the theatre late.

Is she habitually late?

No, she's not. But I get anxious and if she's just a couple of minutes late, I always go, 'It's the theatre. Why do we have to do this?'

You seem to have a healthy, funny perspective on the way that marriage goes and fighting. What does love mean to you?

Love means commitment and that you accept that it's normal to fight and what we want to do on this show is show it's even funny. I look forward to that point and I hear about people that have been married a long time, that they start to fight and then they start laughing at each other. That's the ultimate point.

Have any of these couples given you any material for stand-up acts?

Oh, all of them. Yeah. But mostly I like to get it from my own marriage.

So your tenth wedding anniversary was just last week?

Yeah, last week.

Seinfeld credits his wife Jessica with the idea for the marriage show. She pushed him to do it. And the inspiration was their marriage, their fights and that of other couples they knewu00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0 AFP Photo

How did you celebrate it and what do you think it was that helped get you guys to 10 years?

We really just love to be together. And I think all couples have to learn that you don't know when you get married that you're going to have these fights. You think it's going to be perfect. And it comes as a huge shock. But one of the things, I think both of us talking with friends and finding out, 'Oh, we all kind of do this.'
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This is the thing of the show. Especially men. Men do not know. Because men do not share with other men about what's going on in their marriage. They think, 'My marriage is a mess.' And that is another mission that I... I feel, not to sound lofty, but I feel a little sense of mission with this show. Because I want to tell everybody, 'Your marriage is fine. We're all doing this.'

Are you doing any stand-up?

I am. I was just working this weekend.

How do you keep the bickering of couples from just getting annoying in this show?

Couples in fights perform. They're regular people that are so boring you'd never want to spend 10 seconds with them. But when they are fighting, they are hilarious. They say funny things in funny ways like you would want an actor to do it. That's been the discovery of the showu00a0 that couples are funny.

Why do you think that is?

Because emotion drives comedy. Emotion and conflict is the essence of comedy.

How many judges on the panel at a time?

Three. They're not judges. They're just advisors.

Have you disagreed with the outcomes at all?

Yeah, sometimes. Yeah.

Do you think this show is going to bust that old trope that the wife is always right? Where do you think that came from?

That the wife is always right? Where did you get that? I tell you what, it's so even. And in the beginning, most of the couples we found, we found a lot of crazier husbands than crazy wives.

If Good Housekeeping were to give you a seal of approval for being a good husband why would you earn that seal?

Why would I earn the seal for being a great husband? I just love my wife. I just love her. That's all. I can't not get angry sometimes. I do. I'm not easy. I am not easy to live with. But I try not to say that thing that you wish didn't say. I'm a pretty good fighter. Though I am incredibly edgy and cranky and difficult. But I will not get personal.

The idea of the show is real married couples having a real fight in their home. They're not in the studio. And we watch the video in the studio with a live audience and a panel of celebrity guests and Tom (Papa, stand-up comedian) who is our marriage ref. And we're going to watch the argument.

We're going to discuss the argument, who's right, who's wrong, and we're going to make a call in favour of the husband or the wife, very similar to the way it's done in sports. Because we felt the sports simplicity is what's missing in marriage.

People get into arguments and there's no umpires, the fights just go on and on. It's like marriage. That's really how the show originated.

I was in my apartment in New York, and I'm married for 10 years and we got into a difference of opinion, and it was one of thoseu00a0 I can't even remember what it was, but it was one of those where you just know this is going to go on all-night. And a friend of hers happened to be there, and the friend got a little uncomfortable and said, "You know what? Maybe I should go."

And I said, "You know what? I'm glad you're here. You stay here. And we're each just going to tell you our side of this issue. You decide who's right, who's wrong binding. We will accept it, whatever you say. And we'll be done with this in five minutes."

And that's exactly what we did so I said my side, and she said her side. I believe I lost, but that's not the point. The point is it was better because it was over. And that's kind of the idea of the show, right? To shorten the fight. And we're not presuming to help these people. We're not going to fix your marriage.

Can you give an example of some of the fights we might see?

We have a couple where the dog died and they get into an argument, "Should we stuff the dog or not?" Now a fight like that could go on for a year, and we just end it.

So you will appear on the premiere and you have Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Eva Longoria, Charles Barkley, Larry David, as part of the The Marriage Ref posse. So why celebrities instead of experts?

Because experts are helpful and that's not our thing. This is a comedy. We really feel you are laughing at yourself, laughing at your marriage. Seeing other marriages that are also in absurd situations is a wonderful medicine. We don't believe that there are experts anyway, even if we wanted them.

Alec Baldwin?

Yes.

There are a few people I think of who probably know less about fighting fair in marriage than Alec Baldwin. Can you talk about how this happened? And what exactly do the celebrity judges do? Is it like American Idol?

Who said anything about fighting fair? There's no fighting fair. There's just fighting. It's fighting funny. That's what we are interested in. The fact that people that don't fight fair but are funny is great.

What fight subjects are off limits that you won't touch?

Anything to do with kids, anything that makes you uncomfortable that seems like the marriage might be in any real trouble.

Men and women fight differently, is that addressed in any way on the show?

Yes, that is the show. Tom had a hilarious line he said to me one time is that when a husband and wife are in a fight, the wife has her point of view that she's trying to put across, and the husband spends the entire fight trying to figure out what is this fight about?u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0 -PLANET SYNDICATION

On the Jay Leno-Conan O'Brien-NBC face-off

Can I ask you a Jay Leno question since you were on the very first show?

I can't believe you held it in that long. What will power you have.

Comic legend jerry seinfeld brings a sports-like simplicity to marriage with his new tv show.
introducing, for the first time, the marriage referee. starring couples who fight funny

I'm sure it was my fault. I'm sure the tuxedo was way over the top for the situation.

If you were Conan, would you stay?

If I was Conan?

Yeah. After having these things, sort of, done to you by the network...

What did the network do to him? He's been...

Well, they made him a follow-up act to Jay, and now, they are trying to do that again.

No. He got The Tonight he's I don't think anyone is preventing people from watching Conan. He is there. It's like I'm a stand-up comic. And there are no rules. Once they give you the cameras, it's on you. So I can't blame NBC for having to move things around. I mean, Conan has a chance to, you know, destroy everybody.

Go ahead. You are out there. Takeu00a0I don't think anyone has done anything to Conan. I hope he stays. I think he's terrific. And that was great combination. Jay and Conan worked great. They should keep it.

You say that NBC hasn't done much to Conan, and you are out there, and you sort of get a chance to succeed or not. But, you know, if NBC had pulled the plug after five months on Seinfeld...

They tried to.

Well, they didn't, and thankfully, wiser heads prevailed...

Well, I have a lot of you people to thank, to tell you the truth. It was a lot of the critics that kept us on the air. But then we had good demographics. I mean, you've got to hit the ball. I mean, they can't hit the ball for you. They can only give you the bat. Show business, there's no rules in show business. There's no refs.

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