Jerry Seinfeld Ignored Larry David's Biggest Advice On The NBC Show

As many longtime fans of "Seinfeld" already know, the character of Cosmo Kramer (Michael Richards) was based on a real person. Co-creator Larry David had a neighbor named Kenny Kramer, an eccentric man who was seemingly unemployed and constantly rummaging through Larry's kitchen. David taking inspiration from this real-life guy was clearly a smart choice creatively — Kramer's the best neighbor character in sitcom history, I'd argue — but it did have some awkward implications for David himself.

In the 2004 "Seinfeld" documentary "How It Began," David talked about how he originally wanted to name Kramer's character Kessler. "I still didn't want to call him Kramer," he explained, "Because I knew my real neighbor Kramer, and I knew that by calling this character Kramer it was gonna open a whole can of worms that I don't want to get involved in." In the pilot for the show, the character was referred to as Kessler per Larry's wish, but by the second episode, the show had retconned him to Kramer. 

In the same documentary, Seinfeld himself confirmed this: "Larry was positive, and correctly predicted that if we involved Kenny Kramer in any way in this show, he will exploit it to the maximum and become a complete pain, which of course he did." 

Not long after the show became a hit, real-life Kramer started a whole business cashing in on his TV counterpart. It's called "Kramer's Reality Tour," and in 2013, he added wedding services to the menu. As he wrote on his website, "Kenny Kramer has become ordained by the Universal Life Church — a non-denominational Ministry ... and is now legally empowered to be a wedding officiant." 

Sadly, you can no longer get married through Kenny Kramer; much like many fondly remembered businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Kramer's Reality Tour" appears to have shut down for good as of early 2020. Kramer's many years of shameless exploitation of the TV show (those are his words, not mine) have sadly come to an end.

Everyone involved in the show understood from day one that the name Kramer would come with problems. In fact, Larry explained how real-life Kramer had called up NBC with a list of demands the moment Kramer's name became official. But even predicting this ahead of time, they still went with the name. In the end, they figured the downsides were worth it, or at least Seinfeld thought they were.

"That name just had something that no other name had," Seinfeld insisted in "How it Began." He explained further, "I eventually prevailed on Larry, I said, 'We have to change it to Kramer. There's no other name. There's just something in that name that rings true.'"

Most writers can sympathize with this problem, as can any parent who's had to name a child. Sometimes a name just fits the person, for reasons that nobody can explain in any reasonable way. It didn't help that Seinfeld was interacting with the real Kramer regularly during these early stages of the show, so the character was inextricably linked in his mind to the guy who kept rummaging through Larry David's kitchen. Was Kramer always the perfect name for this sort of character, or did it only feel perfect because Kenny Kramer made it so?

Granted, it was only Kramer's surname that felt to Seinfeld necessary for the character. When it came time to reveal Kramer's first name on the show, they ended up going with Cosmo instead of Kenny. (And before Cosmo, they'd intended to go with Conrad.) David and Seinfeld may have felt the need to borrow Kramer's last name for the show, but Kenny must've been a little too ordinary for the zany character they had in mind.