Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kevin James, and more remember Jerry Stiller
Jerry Stiller’s career contained multitudes, from his comedy duo with wife and collaborator Anne Meara to his dramatic stage work, which found him playing roles both on and off Broadway in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and David Rabe. That said, he’ll be remembered by most for his work on Seinfeld and The King Of Queens, both of which saw him leavening his combustible irascibility with an oddball tenderness. They were memorable performances not just for fans, but also for each show’s cast and crew.
Today, in the wake of his death at the age of 92, alums of Seinfeld and The King Of Queens are flooding social media with tributes to the actor. Among them are three of the four leads on Seinfeld, as well as Kevin James and Leah Remini of The King Of Queens.
Seinfeld, for example, took to Twitter with a photo of him holding a vinyl copy of Ed Sullivan Presents the Last Two People in the World, a comedy album released by Stiller and Meara in 1963. He followed it up with another post: “Jerry Stiller’s comedy will live forever.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, meanwhile, shared a clip that a lot of people are revisiting today. In it, she and co-star Jason Alexander can’t keep a straight face as Stiller’s Frank Costanza puffs his chest: “You’re saying…you want a piece of me?”
“The truth is that this happened all the time with Jerry Stiller,” she wrote. “He was so funny and such a dear human being. We loved him.”
Alexander also took a moment to remember Stiller. “Such sad news that my beloved friend, Jerry Stiller, has passed,” he wrote. “He was perhaps the kindest man I ever had the honor to work beside. He made me laugh when I was a child and every day I was with him. A great actor, a great man, a lovely friend.”