David's traditional post-season routine harks back to his days on Seinfeld, the ground-breaking sitcom he created with comedian Jerry Seinfeld. The season wraps and he tells everyone he's done. Finished. Out.
"After season 8 he didn't say that. He didn't say he was done. So I started thinking, 'Oh, this is bad. This means he's not coming back. This means he's done'."
Her instincts were right. Shortly after the completion of season 8, David called her and told her Curb was finished.
"I got really depressed," she says. "I started crying. For a couple of months, I was in a state of mourning over my character. You create a character over so many years and to think that I was never going to put on those crazy outfits again and be Susie Greene felt much sadder to me than I thought it would."
Of course, David never publicly announced Curb was over and conversely its network HBO repeatedly said the door was always open. It was about 18 months ago that Essman started to suspect that maybe David wasn't done after all...
"Larry and I, we just understand each other in a certain way," Essman smiles. "I just had a feeling... Then he texted me and said, 'I'm seriously thinking about season 9'. Once he said that I knew it."
Returning to the mad, loud, conflict-strewn world of Curb has been nothing other than a joy, she says. The hardest part was keeping Greene's explosive repertoire of insults, threats and outbursts feeling fresh.
"It's a lot harder than you think," she laughs. "Certainly you repeat yourself because a fat f**k is a fat f**k, but I do try to keep it fresh. I never think ahead of time. I never pre-think it. Whenever I have it hasn't been a good thing."
Greene's famous for her screeching, f-bomb laden rants, but it's Essman's elongated enunciation that really sells what she's saying.
"Deee-CAAP-i-TaaT-ED," she booms, catching me by surprise and, if I'm honest, delighting me as she slips into character and references her infamous freak out aimed at David's Larry character, her show husband Jeff Greene and the headless doll of her daughter...
"What I try to do with Susie is make her anger real," she explains, as Greene slips away. "I try to be angry as opposed to acting angry so that whatever comes out is a gut thing and real. I think I've been successful in that."
Yes, very, I laugh.
"You never want to be 'as if' in acting. I don't want to be 'as if' I'm yelling or screaming. I always try to make it based in reality."
That anger has to come from somewhere. She says throughout the years she's used various motivators. For season 9 there was an obvious pick.
"Right now I used Donald Trump. The only positive thing I can say about the man is that I used him for my anger. I'd think of him and just get angry."
So, what kind of things will be getting under Susie's skin this season? Essman can't say. She's had strict instruction from the top.
"I will tell you on penalty of death that I'm not allowed to say anything. I texted Larry the other day and I said to him, 'I'm doing some press in New Zealand'," she says before acting out an eerily accurate impression of David. "'Don't say anything!'."
Then she laughs and says, "The regular group is back, the 'family' we call it. There's a storyline which plays out that's different from anything we've ever done.
"The arc this season is extremely original. It's very edgy and very out there and very political. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump or anything to do with that. It's more globally political. Yeah, it's good."
Essman is a lot of fun to talk with. She's clad in black and comes across as genuine and very chill. So how much of herself is she putting in Greene?
"Well, I never want to play myself because I'm with myself all the time, what's the point?" she says. "[But] I love her.. I don't dress like her. I'm not a yelling, screaming, cursing, crazy person like her."
Then her eyes narrow and she warns; "Unless you push me... I have been known to go Susie Green on customer service people."
She laughs and continues, "you know, they put you on hold for 25 minutes... I was on hold for my cable television and they were driving me crazy. The woman said, 'wait a minute, aren't you that actress?' and I made an accent and said 'Oh no, I'm not her...' because I was really going Susie Green on her...
"Let's put it his way. There is Susie Greene in me, but I think there's way more of me, than her."
There's really only one more question to be asked, and it's a hopeful one. Will Larry and the gang be back for a season 10?
"I don't know definitively because, of course, we're dealing with Larry. So who knows?" she answers.
But what's her intuition telling her?
"I think we'll do season 10. No guarantee. He hasn't said anything. But my gut tells me we'll do season 10. I've been right before."
And then with a big beaming smile, she curbs my obvious enthusiasm by saying, "and I've been wrong before."
THE LOWDOWN
Who: Susie Essman
What: The long-awaited return of Curb Your Enthusiasm
When: Tonight, 8.30pm on SoHo
