One Seinfeld actor avoided the show's typecasting problem and has gone on to have an incredible career afterward. While still widely considered one of the greatest TV comedies of all time, it's fair to question whether Seinfeld has aged badly after over two decades, as well as whether its actors have been dealt a typecasting curse affecting their careers ever since. The hit '90s sitcom is undoubtedly a product of its time, and two of its four main cast members have also found it difficult to be more than just products of Seinfeld's time.
After Seinfeld ended, the main cast members — other than the titular star and co-creator Jerry Seinfeld — went on to kickstart new shows. Not only did actors Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards all fail with subsequent TV prospects, but they failed repeatedly. It got so bad that the "Seinfeld curse" was born. Of course, an actual curse is even more farfetched than Seinfeld's apartment (which couldn't exist in real life), but there's a reason why one actor was finally able to break free of any supposed supernatural misfortune.
Being typecast can be a chance for an actor to find a niche and make a career out of it. However, typecasting can also have the opposite effect, as it did for Jason Alexander and Michael Richards. Julia Louis-Dreyfus avoided the post-Seinfeld typecasting problem, though, because of the relative normalcy of Elaine Benes, her character on the show. Even though Louis-Dreyfus initially struggled post-Seinfeld, she experienced a career resurgence in 2006 with The New Adventures of Old Christine. That sitcom further dispersed any typecasting possibilities and opened up more diverse roles.
How Julia Louis-Dreyfus Avoided The Post-Seinfeld Typecasting Problem
Elaine Benes was a great character for plenty of reasons, and her influence is still felt to this day. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia copied Seinfeld's best character trick where the female lead has a mostly platonic relationship with the male leads. Elaine was also plenty quirky, especially when it came to her atrocious dancing skills, but not compared to Jason Alexander's George Costanza and Michael Richards's Cosmo Kramer. The full extent of Elaine's relative normalcy was finally revealed in Seinfeld season 8, episode 3, "The Bizarro Jerry," in which Elaine becomes the wacky one only after becoming friends with Bizarro Jerry, Bizarro George, and Bizarro Kramer. Elaine’s — and by extension Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s — relative normalcy on Seinfeld made it much harder for her to become typecast. In retrospect, the contrast between Elaine, the Larry David-based George Costanza, and the embodiment of physical comedy known as Kramer was shocking.
Louis-Dreyfus also benefited from landing the titular role in The New Adventures of Old Christine, which further distanced her from typecasting concerns. Christine Campbell was very different from Elaine Benes, and it led to an Emmy Award win for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. Louis-Dreyfus quipped in her acceptance speech, "I'm not somebody who really believes in curses... but curse this, baby!" The New Adventures of Old Christine was canceled in 2010 after five seasons, but she was able to go straight to another very different character, politician Selina Meyer, up until Veep's series finale in 2019.
Now Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in the MCU playing Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, a role that could be a replacement for Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury. By not only finding success after the iconic '90s sitcom but also breaking free from the typecasting problem, she actually broke two Seinfeld "curses," and it's due to a combination of her old role as Elaine Benes and her later role as Christine Campbell. If any of the main actors from Seinfeld deserves to do a victory dance other than its titular lead, it’s Julia Louis-Dreyfus – but only if it’s not in character as Elaine.