Movies - TV
Jason Alexander Helped a Nervous Patton Oswalt Relax In His First Paid Gig on Seinfeld
By MATTHEW BILODEAU
It's always interesting to discover where your favorite comedians got their start, and for Patton Oswalt, it was on the Season 6 episode "Couch" of the iconic comedy "Seinfeld." In a video put out by Netflix, Oswalt talked about his first paid acting job, where he only had two lines but still felt nervous.
Luckily for Oswalt, Jason Alexander had a hilarious method of calming Oswalt's nerves on set. Oswalt said, "Jason Alexander was in the scene with me and I will forever be in his debt because right before we shot, he leaned in and said 'it's still not too late to be fired, Patton.' It made me laugh so hard it so broke the tension, and then I loosened up, and I've been acting ever since."
In any other context, that kind of "advice" would sound mean-spirited, but just in the way Oswalt talks about Alexander, you can hear the actor's brilliant comic timing shine through. While it was little more than a background role, Oswalt did great for what he was hired to do in that scene, which is to make it hard for George Costanza to rent a VHS copy of "Breakfast at Tiffany's."