Seinfeld: Who Plays Susan & What Was The Last Role She Had On TV?
Throughout the first six seasons of "Seinfeld," the love life of George Costanza (Jason Alexander) was an unmitigated disaster. In Season 3, Episode 13, "The Subway," he is robbed and left nearly naked in a hotel room, and in Season 5, Episode 16, "The Stand In," he stays in a relationship solely to spite a friend who claims he is unable to commit.
But in Season 7, Episode 1, "The Engagement," George and Jerry Seinfeld resolve to take a more mature approach to their romantic relationships. George takes this to the extreme, going immediately to the apartment of NBC executive Susan Ross and proposing marriage to her. Because George is George and nothing good in his life can last very long, Susan dies in the Season 7 finale from licking toxic wedding envelopes that he had chosen.
Susan was played by Heidi Swedberg, who appeared on 28 episodes of "Seinfeld" and who had been busy working in both film and television since 1989. In 2010, Swedberg made her most recent small-screen appearance when she played Olivia Maxwell, the mother of a high schooler taken to the hospital after falling and hitting her head, in Season 2, Episode 7 of the TNT medical drama "Hawthorne."
Swedberg has now retired from acting and teaches the ukelele, an instrument she was first introduced to as a child in Hawaii. She told Ukelele magazine that she considers her new life a blend of her old craft and the one she began a few years ago. "In my case," Swedberg said, "I don't think there's much of a difference. I'm still acting. I'm just acting like a musician. 'Musician' is the part I'm playing right now, because I honestly don't think I'm that great of a musician."
Jason Alexander made some harsh remarks about his on-screen chemistry with Heidi Swedberg
Although the George and Susan storyline has become iconic, Jason Alexander once revealed that he had a hard time playing opposite Heidi Swedberg. In 2015, he explained in an interview with Howard Stern that he had difficulty getting into the groove with Swedberg, and that is part of the reason her character was killed off. "I couldn't figure out how to play off of her," Alexander said. "Her instincts for doing a scene, where the comedy was, and mine were always misfiring. And she would do something, and I would go, 'OK, I see what she's going to do — I'm going to adjust to her.' And I'd adjust, and then it would change."
Alexander went on to mention that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who also apparently professed to having difficulty acting with Swedberg, then made an offhand comment that led to Susan's on-screen demise. He later posted a lengthy apology to Swedberg at twitlonger, saying he lacked the candor and maturity to bring his concerns about their on-screen chemistry to Swedberg at the time. He added that he also saw their interactions in a much different light in retrospect.
"I just felt I was on uncertain ground in how to play off that character and I was always concerned that it wasn't working," he wrote. "To Heidi, I personally apologize. You are a sweetheart. Now everybody, calm down and just enjoy the reruns and think, 'why did he think this wasn't working? This is great.'"