A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Actor Absolutely Hated Working On Seinfeld

On the "Seinfeld" episode "The Caddy" (January 25, 1996), Kramer (Michael Richards) hires a golf caddy named Stan (Armin Shimerman) to aid him in both his golf game and in his life. Stan doesn't play a large part in the episode, but he ends up offering legal advice to Kramer late in the episode. Thanks to a prolonged set of plot machinations, Kramer is involved in a car wreck after seeing a woman on the street wearing a brassiere and no shirt in public. Stan encourages Kramer to take the woman, Sue Ellen (Brenda Strong), to court. The climax of the episode, in a clear lampoon of the infamous O.J. Simpson murder trial, will see Sue Ellen forced to try on a brassiere for the judge. She happily does so, proving the bra wasn't hers. 

Shimerman was a notable guest star for "Seinfeld," which makes it curious that his guest role wasn't larger. Shimerman had recently risen to fame playing the Ferengi Quark on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" three years earlier, a role he would continue to play through the end of the series in 1999. Before that, Shimerman was a prolific TV gadfly, securing myriad guest spots on many, many hit shows going back to the early 1980s. Shimerman was in "Hill Street Blues," "Cagney & Lacey," and "Remington Steele." He was in "The Facts of Life," "Alice," and "Sledge Hammer!" He had a recurring role in "Beauty and the Beast," and was in two episodes of "L.A. Law." And that's a small portion of his filmography. 

Shimerman has said that he wasn't too happy on the set of "Seinfeld," however. At a pop culture convention called Supercon in 2017, a fan asked Shimerman about his "Seinfeld" experience, and he confessed to feeling isolated. The four lead actors on "Seinfeld" — Richard, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jason Alexander, and Jerry Seinfeld — weren't really welcoming or inclusive. They barely spoke to Shimerman between takes.

When asked what it was like to work with the "Seinfeld" cast, Shimerman was frank. "Sure," he said, "I hated them. Hated them!" He continued: 

"They were non-communicative, ugly, non-responsive, insular. I was a guest star. The epoisode's called 'The Caddy.' I played a caddy. I played THE caddy. I was on that show for six days, five days? Every day — every day — nobody said a word to me except cues. Nobody came up and started a conversation. I was already on 'Deep Space Nine.' I was already a series regular on a TV show. That's not acceptable. It's not acceptable. If you have a guest star, if you have a day player, if you have an extra, you do not avoid them. You speak to them. We're all human beings together." 

Shimerman finished by saying, "Those four people on 'Seinfeld' never said boo to me." He then told a brief anecdote about how he, Louis-Dreyfus, and Seinfeld had to sit together on a narrow bench for a prolonged period, about 30 minutes, while the show's crew reset some lighting. In the 30 minutes that the three actors were crammed up close to one another on that bench, neither Louis-Dreyfus nor Seinfeld said one word to Shimerman. They talked over him the entire time, discussing their Christmas plans and their upcoming vacations. Shimerman, quite understandably, didn't like how his co-stars ignored him. He left the set without any pleasant thoughts about them. 

"It's as though I wasn't there," he said. He returned to "Deep Space Nine" with pleasure, no doubt, happy to work with co-stars who spoke with him. Shimerman would go on to have a recurring role on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," play multiple roles on "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy," and a hundred other films and TV shows besides. One can hope he never had as cold an experience as he did on "Seinfeld" ever again.