President Obama to appear on Seinfeld’s ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’
Barack Obama and Jerry Seinfeld. (Photo courtesy Crackle/Sony)
President Obama isn’t a comedian. But he’s got comedic timing, as evidenced by his performances on various late-night talk shows, Funny or Die’s “Between Two Ferns” and the White House Correspondents’ Dinners. And the president loves “Seinfeld” — Larry David, the show’s co-creator, is a frequent golf buddy.
So it’s not terribly surprising that Obama was booked as the first guest on the upcoming season of Jerry Seinfeld’s web series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
The episode, which debuts online Dec. 30 on Crackle, Sony’s free streaming network, was shot earlier this month in Washington, D.C. According to the show’s producers, Seinfeld arrived in a 1963 Corvette Stingray Split Window Coupe and tooled around the White House grounds with Obama before they retreated to a basement dining room to talk shop over coffee.
“This was an opportunity to pull back the curtain for Americans on life in the White House,” the president’s press office said in a statement to the Washington Post. “The president and Jerry had a unique, candid conversation that focused largely on the lighter side of the presidency.”
It’s not the first time Obama and a comedian have engaged in a candid conversation. Earlier this year, the president appeared on comedian Marc Maron’s popular podcast in a wide-ranging interview recorded in Maron’s garage studio in Los Angeles.
But Obama is the first nonprofessional comedian to appear on “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” now in its seventh season.
“He’s done some really good work as a monologist at those correspondents dinners,“ Seinfeld told the Post. "That’s how he qualifies to be on the show.”
It’s unclear what exactly the pair discussed during their 90-minute conversation, which was taped on Dec. 7 — a day after Obama delivered a rare primetime address from the Oval Office on the terror threat posed by ISIS.
A trailer previewing the season’s six episodes does not feature any footage from their chat — just B-roll of the Stingray rolling up to the White House.
But the day before the interview, Seinfeld told the paper he "wanted to know how far [Obama] can get in his underwear before it’s weird. And can you really get a good night’s sleep in this place? It’s like ‘Night at the Museum’ to me, sleeping in the White House.”
Seinfeld said he then thought of another question: “Are you ever talking to somebody and do you ever think, ‘This guy’s out of his mind’?”
