'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Star Confirms Surprise Return

Prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good! Comedian Richard Lewis confirmed he will be appearing in Curb [...]

By Daniel S. Levine

Prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay good! Comedian Richard Lewis confirmed he will be appearing in Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 11 after all. Lewis, 73, previously said his recent surgeries would make it impossible for him to appear in Larry David's critically acclaimed HBO series, but that's all changed now. Lewis has been one of the show's most frequent guest stars, having appeared as a fictionalized version of himself in 39 episodes over 10 seasons.

"Great news for me! Although I'm still recovering from three surgeries and missing Season 11 of Curb, LD called me and asked if there was any chance if I felt strong enough to do one episode," Lewis wrote on Thursday. "I am and here I'm on the set to shoot it. I'm so grateful." The comedian included a photo of himself on the Curb Your Enthusiasm set, with the crew behind him.

Back in January, Lewis said health issues would prevent him from appearing in the new season at all. "What a ride, LD! I love you, buddy. Tragically, these past 18 months I've endured a back and two shoulder surgeries and not able to be in [Curb Your Enthusiasm] for season 11. I'll be watching," he wrote at the time.

Curb Your Enthusiasm launched as a special in 1999 and the first eight seasons aired between 2000 and 2011. David brought the show back for Season 9 in 2017, and Season 10 aired from January to March 2020. In July 2020, HBO announced the show would come back for the 11th season, which would bring it past 100 episodes. HBO has not set a premiere date yet.

The new season will take place in a world after the coronavirus pandemic, Jeff Schaffer, an executive producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm, told The Hollywood Reporter in December. "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. And Larry [the character] has opinions on all of it," Schaffer explained. "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."

J.B. Smoove will also be back on Curb as Leon Black. Smoove has been on the show since Season 6 and became a regular cast member in Season 9. "I put down a tweet last year... I said, 'Brand new Curb, Same old Leon,'" Smoove said in a recent PopCulture interview. "You learn your character, you learn who he is, you learn what people love about him. It's kind of like a golf swing. You keep working on that golf swing to the point where you don't have to look at the ball no more. You just hit it."

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