Despite His Kramer Persona, Michael Richards Was All Business On Seinfeld
"Seinfeld" really shook things up in the sitcom world when it began back in 1989. While there had been plenty of TV shows about single people navigating the complications of the dating scene, few had the gall to be as silly as Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld's comedy series. Furthermore, where other shows occasionally funneled drama into their storytelling, the NBC hit never took itself too seriously.
Even a major character death in the middle of the series run — that of George Costanza's (Jason Alexander) longtime significant other, Susan Ross (Heidi Swedberg) — was played for laughs for years after the event occurred. Still, no character over the course of the nine seasons of "Seinfeld" was quite as goofy and off the wall as Jerry's slacker neighbor Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards).
Regularly cooking up hair-brained money-making schemes or ridiculous plots to get even with people he has a grudge with, Kramer is hands-down the silliest of the four main characters on "Seinfeld." And that makes it all the more surprising that Richards took his time on the long-running series as seriously as he did.
Richards didn't want to waste any time on the set of Seinfeld
A "Seinfeld" fan compiled a set of blooper clips featuring Michael Richards on YouTube, and there's one pattern that just about every sequence in the 10-minute video has in common: Richards remains serious even as other actors flub their lines and burst out in gales of laughter.
It's pretty common for sitcoms and even major motion pictures to release a gag or blooper reel that shows some of the mistakes that were captured while filming. Generally, when you watch these scenes, you see the contagious energy behind the mistake or mix-up absorbed by everyone in the scene. This is not so with Richards, who seems to be a true working actor — a guy who just wants to get the job done and go home. Even in scenes where multiple actors seem to lose it, Richards stays on point and in character.
It's particularly funny as it shows he couldn't be more different than the "Seinfeld" character that he's most famous for portraying. Richards has largely been out of the limelight for the past two decades, following a scandalous and racist tirade from the actor and comedian during a stand-up set back in 2006.