You want bread? Yes, please, $3.
No soup for you.
The Soup Nazi. The iconic character and his catch phrase
still popular 30 years after this iconic
1995 Seinfeld episode. Joining us this morning is the actor
who played him,
Larry Thomas. So good to have you here in studio
with us.
Thanks for coming in. Thank you.
Thank you very much. What were you saying about your
hair there?
Oh, so much, much hair.
That's all. People always go like,
what do you think when you watch yourself on that
episode?
And I go hair. There was so much hair.
So what's the first thing people ask you when they
meet you?
Oh gosh,
the The best thing they say is just to just
to compliment my work as as an actor in general.
The worst thing they say is,
have you ever done any other acting besides the Soup
Nazi?
And I try to be nice.
I really do. One time I kind of lost it.
And I said, well, think of this.
The hottest show on television hires a guy that's never
acted before in his life to do the title character
of a guest episode.
Then he gets nominated for an Emmy Fort and he
never acts again.
Does that make sense? Oh well,
I'm I'm sure they had a little bit of a
visceral response
to that
one. My bad. I'm sorry,
but no, I just, I love it.
I love being
associated with that show it,
you know, year by year
I it becomes the multi generational phenomenon that it is.
So year by year I just get more happy about
it.
I mean that's what I was just going to ask
you about.
Looking back, could you have ever imagined that character was
that popular?
And it does span generations.
You know parents make soup for their kids to this
day and probably somewhere along the line say no soup
for you.
It keeps going. Yeah. And I get I get I
do cameo greetings and a lot of them are for
70th birthdays.
So you know and then but some are for bar
mitzvahs and 13th birthdays.
So it's it's amazing to me.
I don't, I don't know why,
but I'm very lucky cause of it,
yeah. So some of that fame that you garnered with
that allows you to do events like today you're going
to be in Tacoma.
What are you doing here today?
So we're going to
have a bunch of people come and do selfies and
get autographs,
and the proceeds are going to the All for Meow
Cat shelter,
which is being built right now in Yelm.
And so hopefully we're going to save a lot of
cats.
Yeah. You know, I had so funny because I have
a cat,
which is, she's a strictly indoor cat.
But we have a big picture window and there's at
least three cats that love to hang out in my
backyard.
And I'm always going, Chloe,
you want to go make some friends,
you know? But she doesn't want to go outside.
No, I'm an indoor. They just,
yeah, they jump over the wall.
They hang out in my backyard and the different ones,
so
they're all over the place.
How did this partnership come to be?
Well, Joe and I have known each other for many
years,
actually. We've discussed doing different events up here,
especially when that Funko pop came out,
'cause there's a Funko store up here.
But with this one, it was just like this is
for a charitable cause.
And you know, I just said let's let's try to
make this,
this happen. And we did.
And so we're real thrilled about it.
I think it's going to go really well and I
hope
so And I, you know,
I hope it builds the shelter and
saves a lot of poor cats from being strays.
So do you still keep in contact with Jerry?
Not so often, but I did do a commercial with
him about a month ago and
it's so funny because he never changes.
He when we first worked together,
for some reason I did my audition for him
and the one he laughed his head off,
but he didn't understand why.
I made the character as mean as I did,
so he wanted me. He made me do it again
and play him nicer,
which I I couldn't repeat again.
I have no idea how I did that or what
I did,
but he didn't think it was as funny.
So when he hired me,
he just said, you know,
forget about the direction I gave you,
do what you did when you came in.
And then I worked with him again on a commercial
for the Super Bowl in
2012, and the same thing happened.
You know, he gave me a suggestion.
I told him why I'd rather do it differently.
And he was OK, do it your way.
And then we just work together again on this commercial
and it was the same kind of thing.
So he never gets really egotistical about who he is
and how
how amazingly, you know, powerful he has become
as a performer. He always just goes with what's funnier
and anybody can can suggest anything and change his mind.
And that's what I love about the guy is he
never does.
I mean, he made a comment to me
the year after the pandemic.
We had an e-mail exchange
and he said something about,
you know, just remember, any work is good work in
our crazy business.
And I thought, wow, you're still saying stuff like that?
Because for him,
you know, he could never not get work.
But for him to still have that kind of attitude
is amazing.
So yeah, we see each other every few years.
And and if not communicate by e-mail,
That's nice. That's good to know.
Do you have any acting projects going on right now
or people can see the last one.
I'm not sure what's happening to it.
I it. I hope it goes because
what I like to do now more than anything else
is dramatic stuff that challenges me so much.
I'm not totally sure I could even do it.
So the last thing I did was a pilot for
a modern day retelling of
1001 Arabian Nights and Shahrazad and I play her father
who
has 1001 panicked nights about his daughter being executed.
And when the guy came to me with it,
I said, Oh my God,
this is exactly what I'm looking for because this guy's
got to go be so emotionally wrecked,
you know? And I I wonder if I can go
there and and if it does become a series keep
going there.
So I got to do the pilot,
and he's trying to sell it.
And I just keep going.
Like, I hope this happens because
1001 nights of of emotional
destruction is what an actor does this for.
So, yeah. Yeah. I mean,
it sounds like hard work.
OK, I know we're running out of time here,
but people want to know if you actually like soup.
I love soup. What's your
favorite New England clam chowder?
Always. Since I was a kid.
All right, you're going to have to stop by Ivers
today.
The Pacific Northwest treasure. Oh,
cool. OK. Well, really quick,
where can people go to get more information about your
charity event today?
Well, it all from meow.com.
OK All right. Perfect. We got it listed right there
on your screen.
Larry Thomas, thank you so much for coming on.
It's such a pleasure to have you here.
Been a pleasure. We'll be right back.