Larry David’s HBO sketch series Life, Larry, And The Pursuit Of Unhappiness is airing its final episode tonight, ending a run through American history that spent more time than we would have liked on the fairly exhausted question, “What if there was a Larry David-style asshole hanging around some very famous historical event?” The series was a pretty good source of oddball cameos (and the occasional swipe at a former co-star’s vaccine-hating husband), though, something it proved right up through the final installment, which saw an appearance from a largely untested actor named Barack Obama.*
(*Better known for other work.)
Obama, a producer on the series through the Higher Ground production company he runs with his wife Michelle, already appeared in the first episode of the series, but that was in a strictly “Let’s stick a former president in this thing to give it a little clout during the introduction” sense. The show’s finale this week saw Obama actually appear in a sketch opposite David, who’s apparently to blame for the “tan suit controversy”—an actual incident America decided it gave a shit about back in 2014, when various pundits were shocked that Obama would give a live press conference on ISIS while wearing “unpresidential” earth tones. (Seriously, people were mad about this; it has its own Wikipedia page.)
In a recent conversation with Variety, producers on the show were quick to praise Obama’s comedic chops, but also revealed a rather disturbing fact about the filming of the series. I.e., that the longer Obama spent with David, the more he started to sound like him. “I have fun being annoyed by Larry,” series co-creator Jeff Schaffer, a long-time David collaborator, recalls Obama saying during their downtime on the four-hour shoot, “And when we get together, I realize I start sounding like him.” That includes what is easily the weirdest moment of the whole behind-the-scenes examination of the series, and one that we kind of wish had made it in front of a camera: Obama’s apparently militant takes (delivered with what sounds like minimum prompting) on condiments. “No one should be using ketchup after age 12,” Schaffer reports the man who once ordered the death of Osama Bin Laden declaring to his rapt listeners. “That’s a child’s condiment. It’s just sugar. Use mustard! Use an adult condiment!”
