Paul Reiser is so unrecognizable as his character on The Kominsky Method that he doesn’t even recognize himself.
That’s the simple way of summarizing a joke that’s as audacious as it is bizarre, all predicated on what the viewers know and what the Netflix show knows they know. In the fifth episode of the third and final season, around the 12 minute mark, Reiser of 2021 sits in an easy chair watching and commenting on a movie that stars Reiser from 1982—a mega-meta moment in a series that’s already overflowing with in-jokes.
The self-referential nudging starts with Michael Douglas, who plays an acting coach who never made it as an actor. He’s the kind of guy who only wishes he had become Michael Douglas. Kathleen Turner, who starred with Douglas in Romancing the Stone, Jewel of the Nile and The War of the Roses, brings poignance to her role in the final season as Kominsky’s ailing ex-wife—thanks in part to the audience’s happy memories of their past partnerships. The third-wheel of their ’80s movies was Danny DeVito, who appears in this series as one of Kominsky’s doctors. His sidekick status has now passed to Reiser as the older boyfriend of the ex-couple’s thirtysomething daughter (Sarah Baker.)
But Reiser doesn’t look like Reiser. He has been DeVito-ized for his role as Martin Schneider, costumed and made-up to look older and heavier than Reiser is in real life, as well as bald. “Someone said the other day, ‘You are just one pair of wire-frame glasses away from being Benjamin Franklin,’” Reiser tells Vanity Fair in an interview.
The transformation has earned Reiser an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor in a comedy series—his first since receiving 10 nominations during the 1990s for his work on Mad About You. Reiser has never won, but that might change with Kominsky, and his performance in this scene in particular is worth a closer look.
Vanity Fair: You must hear over and over again from people that they can barely see you in the character Martin.
Paul Reiser: When we were doing the show, I would put on the makeup and I forget about it. Then I’d just walk past a mirror and be shocked. Sometimes I would take a walk on the lot and bump into somebody I knew. “Hey, how are ya?” And they’d kind of walk away. I’d go, “Oh, right. I look like a crazy old guy.”
And then in this scene when your character is watching you in the movie Diner, he keeps squinting and saying he can’t see the actors.
So small! That’s because [Martin] was lobbying for a bigger TV that nobody would let me get.
Was it also so he wouldn’t have to say, “Hey, Paul Reiser kind of looks like me?”
You know, watching that scene in its final version, and that cutting back and forth—from the film of me at 24, to me now aged further—it wasn’t even ironic. It’s like, well, those aren’t the same people at all.
They’re watching the movie because director Barry Levinson appears in the show as himself, offering a lifechanging movie role to Kominsky.
I thought he was so great in it. He’s a good actor. I don’t think he thinks of himself as that, but he was great. And that storyline of Michael’s character, Sandy, getting a big break at the end of his career, in his golden years, was so moving.
When Martin is watching, he points at the screen and says, “Ask Levinson if he’s a nice guy. Because I heard otherwise.” Were you pointing at yourself or Kevin Bacon?
Bacon. [Laughs.] I am very good friends with Kevin. I told him in advance, “There’s a nice joke in there. You’re going to enjoy.” I heard he’s not nice. Find out if that’s true. He is in fact very, very nice.
What was that like for you having Barry and Diner become part of the show, given your history together?
When I first heard it, I thought it might be a little bit inside baseball, you know? Is the audience going to care that the actor got a big part? But it wasn’t really about show business. It was about something you wanted all your life, but you don’t get it and you kind of give up on it and say, “Okay, it’s not going to be.” You make your peace with that. And then it comes in anyway and you go, “… where do I put this?”
In another knowing exchange during this sequence, Douglas looks at young Paul Reiser, Steve Guttenberg, Kevin Bacon, and Daniel Stern on the television and says, “It’s hard to believe these guys were all unknown actors when Barry cast them.” How strange was all this?
When Barry was on the set, we were hanging out and I just would periodically think: what a journey. You know? I mean, that is 40 years. It’s 40 years exactly from me stumbling into his office by accident and ending up with Diner and subsequently a career. And now he’s playing himself and I’m playing a guy older than I would ever imagine myself being—and we’re watching a clip of Diner. It was a bit mindblowing, but in a certain way it also felt like, well, of course that’s how life is. Life circles back.
Did showrunner Chuck Lorre talk to you about including Diner as a part of this final season, and why he wanted to do that?
It came together slowly. It sort of unraveled in a strange way. Barry had shared with me that he was watching season two and loved the show. I shared that with Chuck, and Chuck, who admires Barry so much, was very moved. I put them in touch, and then they corresponded. Barry shared with him, “I really love the show.” And Chuck said, “How much…? Do you want to be in it?”
And then having your character actually watch yourself in Barry’s movie came later?
As he wrote towards the end, I think he had this idea, “What if they’re sitting around watching Diner? That’s a nice, free little Easter egg.”
What do you mean by free?
It doesn’t stop the show. You get it, or you don’t. I would certainly imagine that people under 50 don’t know the movie and certainly don’t know that that was me. When he came up with the idea, he ran it by me. I thought it was really fun.
There’s a thematic reason to use it, too. So much of The Kominsky Method is people talking. Often they’re even doing the talking in an actual restaurant booth. They’re not obviously connected, but they’re spiritual cousins, right?
They’re glimpses into male bonding, you know. Barry always talked about Diner being like, guys would go out and want to meet a girl, and then come back to the campfire and talk about it. What happened, what didn’t happen, and what you hope happens. But that’s where the actual content is. The guys’ friendships were almost more important than whatever did happen out there. And they were clueless. There’s a piece of that here too.
In both cases, the talk is so often about their love lives. Or lack thereof. Diner is about young guys and Kominsky is about old timers. The problems and hangups are different at either end, but these guys are still mystified and confused by love.
I think Chuck’s idea for my character was sort of karmic payback for Sandy Kominsky, who dated younger women his whole life. And now his younger daughter is marrying this old guy. So yeah, there’s just a lot of room for improvement, room for learning, that men are always doing about women and about themselves.
Diner Easter eggs are becoming a thing for you. Wasn’t there one involving your scientist character from Stranger Things?
When we did a season two of Stranger Things, when I first met the Duffer brothers I assumed that the only reason they knew me would it be from Aliens. Aliens has such overlap with Stranger Things. And they surprised me by saying that actually their first encounter with me was their father introducing them to Diner. I said, “Well, I wouldn’t have thought that that was part of your consciousness.”
The scene they ended up referencing is the same scene you and the Kominsky characters are watching, in which your Diner character is trying to passive-aggressively guilt Steve Guttenberg into giving you his sandwich.
I had a scene with David Harbour as Hopper in a coffee house. It was a diner! And they wrote the scene and he said, “Did you like the joke? Did you get it?” I said, “What joke?” He said, “The little Diner reference.” I went, “I didn’t get a Diner reference! I was having a roast beef sandwich, and I offered it to him.” [Laughs.] I said, “Guys, that’s so subtle, even I didn’t get it!” I said, “If it’s really a Diner reference, he should have the sandwich and I should be eyeballing the sandwich.”
What’s it like having a movie from the earliest part of your career popping up now?
For a little movie it has a big influence on a lot of creative people. Certainly a lot of writers who, in Diner, saw something they hadn’t seen before, which was that sort of dialogue, that sort of a reality. It did speak to a lot of people.
This Q&A has been edited, with some questions added or expanded for context and clarity.
— Matt Shakman and Ben Richardson on Where WandaVison and Mare of Easttown Overlap
— Inside Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Radical Directorial Debut, The Lost Daughter
— Billy Porter and Evan Peters on Building Boundaries and Method Acting
— Amazon Prime Video May Be at a Turning Point
— Love Is a Crime: Inside One of Hollywood’s Wildest Scandals
— Cynthia Erivo and Michaela Coel Ask Each Other the Questions Nobody Else Ever Does
— Sign up for the “Awards Insider” newsletter for must-read industry and awards coverage.