Confessions of a Soup Nazi

Greetings from Larry Thomas. I'm the actor who played "The Soup Nazi" on Seinfeld. First of all I must start this with the usual disclaimer: The word "Nazi" as used here has nothing to do with the Nazi party as a political entity. It is merely a slang expression to point out that one is overly strict or fanatical in their behavior. I myself am Jewish and I have never taken offense at it. Secondly, a bit of trivia.

Dispelling Rumors

#1 - I'm an actor and have been for about twenty five years. The part was not played by a real soup vendor. When not earning a living as an actor, I have been working as a Bailbondsman and Court investigator. I've had almost every odd job under the sun, but never have I been a chef (my father was a chef, nuff said).

#2 - I did not base my character on the real New York soup vendor. Believe it or not, I never even saw him until after the show aired and the news media began to air comparisons of us. The night my agent called me and told me I had the audition the next morning, there was no script available. He only had the name of the character and the fact that he could be of Middle Eastern origin. So I put a tape of "Lawrence Of Arabia" into the VCR and studied Omar Sharif's accent. I called an actor friend of mine and told him of the audition and he asked me if they wanted me to improvise some dialogue, what would I say? I said I would probably call George a small fry or something like that (bingo), Jerry would pass marginally (bingo again), Kramer would knock down my soup stand (OK, so I was wrong on that) and that I might find Elaine attractive (whoops!). Then I said if they misbehaved, I would probably yell something like "no soup!" and tell them to go to the end of the line. My friend said, "That's great, even if they don't ask you to improvise, promise me you'll use that 'no soup' thing." When I went to the audition the next morning and picked up the script and my character said, "no soup for you", I thought this one was meant to be. So other than a brilliant script by Spike Feresten, the creation of the character was mine.

On The Set

The first thing that happened that let me know I was on a truly amazing set was Jerry coming up to me and saying, "forget about the direction I gave you in the audition, just do what you did when you came in, that was funny." I can't tell you how rare it is for a producer to say something like that. We only worked four days instead of the usual five because of a holiday that week. I had a trailer somewhere but I never would have went to it because it was so fascinating watching them rehearse (I rehearsed very little, only in two of the four days). But watching them work together was fantastic. There was a storyline that got cut out of the episode that I just loved involving some unsalted pretzels Jerry had in his apartment which he called "baldies". Each time someone tasted them and didn't like them, Jerry would say "I shouldn't have gotten the baldies". Then of course Kramer came in and couldn't stop eating them. After we finished shooting the episode and the audience left, Larry David came up and said he wanted to change a couple things. At one point when Elaine did the imitation of Al Pacino I just yelled "no soup for you." It was Larry's idea for me to say "very good, very good, you know what? No soup for you." The other change he made was when the guy said "por favor" to me I replied "unacceptable". Larry wanted me to change it to "adios muchacho", only the guy who played the part already left. So in the finished show I was actually saying that line to Larry David (the show's co-creator and executive producer).

The Finale

When we did the finale, all the actors had to sign an agreement not to talk to anyone about it or tell anyone we were in it. So one day while we were working on it we broke for lunch. Nobody said not to leave the studio, so not thinking about it, Brian George (Babu), Ian Abercrombie (Mr. Pitt), and I walked to a restaurant across the street. We were engrossed in conversation but I kept catching people looking at us as they walked by, though it didn't occur to me why. We were sitting in the restaurant when I again noticed people looking. The waiter seemed to be smiling a bit too much. Then it occurred to me, since no one knew we were doing the finale and we were all from different episodes, it must have looked like some kind of Seinfeldian nightmare to see Babu, Mr. Pitt, and the Soup Nazi having lunch together. That gave me the idea that they should do a spin-off series of a restaurant run by the Soup Nazi, Babu, and Poppie (who had a very funny bit in the courtroom but it got cut for time purposes) although none of the producers shared my enthusiasm. All in all the finale was a blast to work on. They spared no expense on the catering which was fantastic, and hey, I got to stand in the back of the courtroom next to Teri Hatcher for hours during rehearsal (again, nuff said).

In Summation

The whole experience was an actor's dream. Getting an Emmy nomination for my first guest starring role in a major TV role was great. "Entertainment Tonight", "Inside Edition", and "Day And Date" did interviews with me, and Jerry (Seinfeld) sent a stretch limo to take me to the Emmy's. Of course I lost to Tim Conway (not bad company to be in) and my "Entertainment Tonight" and "Inside Edition" interviews were pre-empted by a football game and a baseball game (respectively). The night the second interview was pre-empted. I was sitting on the couch and I could swear I heard the voice of a phone operator say "Your fifteen minutes are up, sir. Please deposit another twenty years and try this career again." Having been "The Soup Nazi" has given me the opportunity to get a lot of other acting roles, and doing the finale gave me another experience with TV, magazine, newspaper, and radio interviews. Actually, I had a lot more of this publicity during the finale than I did when I was an Emmy nominee. The night of the finale I was in New York at Tom's restaurant at a party thrown by "Maxim Magazine" and just about every entertainment show were there interviewing me. I also had in studio interviews lined up for the next day, but unfortunately Mr. Sinatra (one of my idols) passed away that night and all of it was canceled the next morning. So I took a stroll through Central Park that day stopping people and asking "Has anyone seen my glass slipper?" There have been many articles and photos about the Soup Nazi but three have stood as my favorite sitings: being a "clue" in the "Wall Street Journal" crossword puzzle, being a "Jeopardy" question and the biggest thrill of all; being characterized in "MAD" magaine.

The Catch

If you liked my work as "The Soup Nazi" and would like to see me on another show, write to NBC, Castlerock Entertainment, or any other network TV show and tell 'em.