Richard Lewis Recovering From Serious Surgeries, Won't Appear in 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Season 11

01/27/2021 10:31 am EST

Comedian Richard Lewis has revealed that he is currently recovering from multiple serious surgeries, and therefore won't be able to appear in Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 11. In a post on Twitter, Lewis shared the news, revealing that he had to have operations on his back and shoulders. He also included a photo of himself and series creator/star Larry David, wishing his "buddy" luck and saying that he'll still "be watching" the upcoming new season of the HBO comedy series.

Lewis is been a recurring character on Curb Your Enthusiasm since Season 1, playing a fictionalized and exaggerated version of himself. The series debuted with a special in 1999 and then went on to film eight seasons through 2011. It returned for a ninth season in 2017, and then again for Season 10 in 2020. At this time, it does not appear that the forthcoming Season 11 had an announced premiere date. However, thanks to a Hollywood Reporter op-ed by Curb Your Enthusiasm producer and writer Jeff Schaffer, the whole season will be set in a post-coronavirus pandemic world.

"We started writing Curb before COVID, and then when COVID happened we had to change some things. We had to make the decision about what era we were writing — before, during or after COVID — and the real factor was when we would be premiering," Schaffer explained. "We figured we would be coming out in the fall of 2021 and we didn't want what we were writing in March of 2020 to be so timely that it would feel dated more than a year later."

He then went on to say, "So we made the decision to set the new season in a post-COVID world. COVID definitely happened and we definitely talk about it, but we were assuming that Biden would win and that things would be better by the fall of 2021. COVID is in the rearview mirror, but it happened." Schaffer then joked, "And Larry [the character] has opinions on all of it." Finally, he added, "I can't tell you which characters got COVID, but I can definitely tell you that we do examine peoples' behavior during the COVID era."

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