Susie Essman says her Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star Jeff Garlin is doing well following his recent bipolar disorder diagnosis.
Essman attended a cocktail party celebrating the forthcoming Broadway musical Some Like It Hot on Friday night, during which she told Page Six that Garlin is “working very hard. He’s on his meds, and he’s working in therapy, and he’s working hard to manage it.” In September, the former Goldbergs star shared his diagnosis for the first time on Instagram. He wrote, “Bipolar is a motherfucker. Sometimes it’s just too much to deal with. I’m doing the best I can. This the first time that I’ve opened up about this. #bipolar.”
This revelation from Garlin came one day before the season ten premiere of The Goldbergs in which Garlin’s character was killed off. Last year, the actor confirmed that while he had not been fired from the show, he was the subject of several human resources investigations regarding his behavior on set. And last December, an anonymous employee who worked on the sitcom told Deadline that the actor was “extremely verbally and emotionally abusive” during the filming of the show.
But Garlin’s mental health struggles haven’t stood in the way of him filming the next season of Curb, Essman confirmed. “I just came home for Thanksgiving, and this is the funniest season,” the actor who plays Garlin’s wife, Susie Greene, on the show revealed. “I’ve already lost my voice screaming and yelling at Larry [David] and Jeff, so more to come. I mean, I literally got laryngitis from screaming at them, but they deserve it, don’t they?” She added that when she meets fans of the show in real life, they’re often disappointed that she’s nothing like her on-screen persona. She confessed, “I don’t love yelling and screaming. I love the character Susie Green. In my real life, I don’t behave that way. People stop me on the street and I’m gracious to them, and I can see in their faces they’re visibly disappointed and upset that I’m being nice.”
With a comedy career that has spanned over three decades, Essman has met and developed close friendships with a number of the biggest names in showbiz, including the late Gilbert Gottfried whose funeral she spoke at in April. Of her late friend, the actor joked, “I don’t know anyone in my entire life who was cheaper than Gilbert. It was a pathology, but everything about Gilbert was so endearing—like a child that you wanted to take care of, which I also think was manipulative. He did that to get you to take care of him, but he was the cheapest person alive.”