‘Curb’ actress doesn’t yell at family in real life

Susie Essman, a star on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has been renovating her upstate New York home for three long years. The reason it’s taking so long is both the truth and a joke.

“That’s what happens when you marry a contractor. Nothing ever gets done,” Essman told me.

“Its like the shoemaker’s wife goes without shoes.”

Essman, who made me laugh during our whole interview, will perform stand-up Saturday at the Venetian.

Some of you know Essman best as the hilarious, often-screaming “Susie Greene” character on “Curb.”

Essman always tells people she’s only acting as an angry person on “Curb.” In real life, she told me, she doesn’t run around screaming at her husband and children — “unless they push me.”

I asked her what I should tell fans here.

“Don’t bring the kids, because it’s going to be raucous,” she said. “When I see kids in the audience, I’m like, ‘I’m not changing my act because you’re a bad parent.’ ”

That really made me laugh.

“I always say in interviews, ‘Don’t bring the kids,’ and then they bring the kids, and they say, ‘My kids are very mature.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, please.’ ”

Then, Essman and I discussed actual, scientific findings suggesting kids don’t mature until well into adulthood, because the human prefrontal cortex doesn’t fully form until after age 25.

“I have four kids in their 20s,” Essman said. “And they’re morons.”

Essman said Hollywood filmmakers always want her to portray “the screaming, yelling, bitching character.” But Essman has passed up the chance to be that kind of character actress.

I told what she already knows: She could have made a a different career by reprising “Susie Greene” in Hollywood, if only she had “Joe Pesci’d” her career.

“I understand that. But it’s boring to me. I love playing Susie Greene. She’s a great character I created,” she said. “But I don’t want to play her anywhere but on ‘Curb,’ ” as directed by Larry David.

“Larry’s such a genius, to play her for the parts he writes for her is a pleasure. Other people just write the anger. They don’t get the other part of Susie Greene — the humanity of Susie Greene.”

As soon as Essman said “the humanity” of the cussing Susie Greene, she giggled at the thought of that.

I asked: “Has your accent typecast you in acting?”

“Yes. I always get, ‘Make it less New York,’ which I think is Spanish for ‘Make it less Jewish,’ ” she joked.

“My brother-in-law is the casting director for the public theater, which does Shakespeare in the park. The big joke is, I have a brother-in-law who never casts me in anything.”

But she can live without Shakespeare.

“There’s rats in that park anyway,” she said.

I asked her if there’s anything else you should know if you go see her at the Venetian.

“If you’re really, really shy, don’t sit up front, because you don’t know where I’ll go,” she said. “I’m not mean to anybody. I don’t pick on anybody.

“But I like to create a live experience,” she said. “It’s like sex. We’re having that experience right in that moment, and it will never be the same again.”

“Does anyone come up to you afterward, upset?” I said.

“Surprisingly no,” she said. “It’s amazing how people like attention!”

Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.