Curb Your Enthusiasm boss: Season 11 is set right now -- “if everyone had the brains to get vaccinated"

The Hollywood Reporter

In the post-pandemic world of Season 11, COVID is in the rearview mirror -- and it didn’t change Larry one bit. But why avoid the pandemic altogether? "Some of it was practical," says executive producer Jeff Schaffer. "Meaning, we have to see our actors’ faces. And it’s going to look very weird if our actors are not in masks, but everyone sitting around them at the restaurant is. So, either our actors look like the only irresponsible people in Brentwood — or the only Republicans in Brentwood — or we had to do something else. It just made a lot more sense to place this season in a post-COVID world. When we wrote last spring, we knew we were going to come out in the fall of 2021 and we said: Look, there will be vaccines so everyone in California will be able to act normally — or at least act like people in Florida have been acting for the last two years." Season 11 began filming last November before there the existence of COVIΠvaccines and -- after taking January off due to the surge in COVID cases -- finished in May, when the cast and crew were fully vaccinated. "We were able to skate a clean program because of two reasons. One is resources. You have a big bubble where everyone is getting tested every day — and that includes the driver, who is the only driver who is allowed to take the actors, (and) the only PA who is allowed in trailers to get wardrobe," says Schaffer. "It was a big bubble and that didn’t change even when people were vaccinated; the rules are still the rules. People were a lot less anxious once they knew that everyone around was vaccinated, and that they still have to wear the mask and that we’re still taking all of these precautions. The other reason we made it through is because the crew was so responsible when they weren’t shooting. We said. 'Look, we’re a big family here and we want to make sure the whole family makes it through the end. So, everyone be careful and responsible and know that you’re going to come back and spend the rest of your week with this family.' And everyone was super, super responsible." How was Larry David, a known germophobe, on set? "Once he heard about all of the protocol and bought into it, he was completely unfazed by the threat of COVID," says Schaffer. "Everyone asks, 'How did you get Larry to shoot during COVID? All on location and in people’s houses?' And it’s a testament to how much we don’t like writing. We had already written the season. If we hadn’t, I don’t think we would have shot! But the fact that it had already been done — writing is such a painful process — once we had done all that torture, it was like, 'Let’s have some fun and do this thing!' I’m not going to let it sit for a year. We had already done the hard part."

ALSO:

• Curb Your Enthusiasm subverts expectations by largely avoiding the pandemic: "It seems like writing a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm during COVID would pretty much write itself," says Ross Bonaime. "The pandemic would've given Larry an opportunity to avoid human contact as much as possible, cancel all plans, and validate many of his feelings about society in general. But 'The Five-Foot Fence' avoids any predictable COVID story, instead, having Larry discover during Albert Brooks’ faux funeral that Brooks is a COVID supply hoarder, leaving everyone wishing that Brooks was actually dead. It’s unusual to see an angry group of people in Curb for once that isn’t focusing their disgust towards Larry."
• While Curb has long become set in its ways, it’s retained its caustic bite, thanks entirely to its impressive ability to keep concocting creative ways to torment the socially maladjusted Larry
• Curb is back, same as it ever was, but never resting on its laurels or taking the easy way out
• Hopefully Albert Brooks comes back because his “live funeral” is a fiasco of Curb-size proportions
• How Larry David's boring-dad look became trendy