The Shrinking Actor Who Played Two Wildly Different Roles On Seinfeld
"Shrinking" star Christa Miller, who plays rock-collecting empty nester Liz on the brilliant Apple TV+ series, can portray an incredibly diverse range of women. Even just as Liz, the next-door neighbor to Jason Segel's grieving therapist character Jimmy, she shows her ability to be truly complex, balancing maternal warmth and venomous vitriol all within herself in a single scene. But long before she played the astonishingly great Liz or even snark queen Jordan on "Scrubs," Miller played two wildly different roles on the hit NBC sitcom "Seinfeld." What's even funnier is that both characters interacted almost entirely with Jason Alexander's character George Constanza, first as his potential employer, whom he ends up offending in a major way, and then later as his girlfriend, though it doesn't last long.
Miller is amazing when she's playing someone sweet and even more incredible when she's emotionally eviscerating someone with just a few words and a cold stare, and she got a chance to do both on "Seinfeld" in her two guest appearances. Though she's far from the only amazing "Seinfeld" guest star ("Breaking Bad" stars Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn both had roles, for example), the fact that she got to double-dip and play such opposing roles is a testament to her greatness.
First Miller played George's potential boss at a women's underwear company
In the B plot of the season 5 episode "The Sniffing Accountant," George gets a job interview at a women's underwear company thanks to his dad, Frank (Jerry Stiller). After nailing his interview with manager Sid Farkas (Patrick Cronin), George gets a bit too confident in his swagger and feels the fabric of a woman's shirt while they are both waiting for the elevator. The woman spins around, furious, and it's revealed that she's Ms. DeGranmont, Farkas's boss and therefore the newly hired George's boss as well. Miller plays her with all of the ferocity that we've come to expect from her as a performer, and she puts George in his place and demands that he be fired immediately, to which Farkas obliges.
As amusing as it would have been to see George working as a bra salesman under Cronin and Miller's management, the way things worked out were just fine because George still had plenty of other amazing, ridiculous jobs over the course of "Seinfeld." And besides, it freed up Miller to return and play another character who interacted with George — and this time, she got to be friendly!
In season 6 Miller played George's girlfriend
In the season 6 episode "The Doodle," George and his new girlfriend Paula (Miller) go to dinner with Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) and his girlfriend Shelly (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson), and George discovers a little doodle that Paula did of him that he is deeply offended by, thinking it's ugly. Paula later tells Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) that she really likes George and isn't picky about looks, and Elaine relays this information to George, who is extremely upset by the whole thing instead of focusing on the fact that Paula does really like him. He confronts her, and things escalate, as they always do on "Seinfeld," ending with the two breaking up because Paula is a little too casual about germs.
Miller's impact on "Seinfeld" was small but mighty, and showed just a hint of what she was capable of doing comedically. While she didn't get to do anything as cool as help name creator Larry David's other show, like one guest star, she did get to both romance and rebuke George, and ladies, isn't that the dream?