George Costanza is my favorite character on Seinfeld, so it was interesting to listen to his story about how Jason Alexander landed the role. He says he was so sure that he wasn't going to get the part that when he got called in for a reading, he read the lines as if he were Woody Allen. A couple of days later Larry David called Alexander and told him to come back for a reading with Jerry Seinfeld and the studio execs. David told him not to change a thing about his approach (that of a nebbish, neurotic New Yorker) but to drop the Woody Allen accent.
In this clip Alexander also reveals some of the other contenders for the role, including Chris Rock, Danny DeVito, and Paul Shaffer.