The ‘Seinfeld’ Writers Just Revealed A Messed Up Plan They Had For The Soup Nazi
"It was a full coming together of soup and Nazi."
In 1995, around the absolute height of Seinfeld‘s popularity, the world was introduced to The Soup Nazi. He was a strict Manhattan soup seller who wouldn’t put up with George and Elanie’s whining (fair) and was notorious for both his delicious meals and his authoritarian rule. Naturally, he became a cult icon.
The character was based off a real person (New York soup vendor, Al Yeganeh) who would later curse the show and accuse them of adversely affecting his business (despite attracting huge crowds). But it turns out he could have had a lot more to complain about. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Seinfeld writer/producer David Mandel (who now works on Veep!) has revealed that the show’s writers’ room was actually toying with the idea of making the character a real Nazi.
“We joked a whole bunch about an end scene that would take place in the jungles of Brazil, à la The Boys From Brazil, where the Soup Nazi would return to the other Nazis — the actual former Nazi war criminals — with his soup recipes,” he said.
“It was sort of half-serious, half ‘should we do this?/half ‘we’re never going to do it’. But it was much discussed. Going down a river and seeing lots of young boys with blue eyes from experimentation with the soups — it was a full coming together of soup and Nazi.
“Probably just as well that we didn’t do that one.”
As it was, the Soup Nazi kind of vanished from Seinfeld without much fanfare after his business went under thanks to Elaine finding and publishing his recipes. He re-appeared in the series’ finale to testify against the group. 1995 may have been a simpler time, but I reckon eugenics may have messed with the Soup Nazi’s quirky rep a bit.
In the just-released EW interview, Mandel and his co-writer Jeff Schaffer revealed a bunch of other dropped plotlines too. At one point the writers room went “very far down the road” with getting George Costanza into medical marijuana, and at another they toyed with the idea of getting Kramer into the business of “taking regular morgue-quality skeletons, refurbishing them, and turning them into museum-quality skeletons for teaching hospitals” as a set-up for a gag about a guy with one leg stumbling across a tibia.
The latter was shot down by Larry David who reportedly called it “the worst practical joke ever to a guy who’s missing a leg” and emphatically told them “No. Kramer’s not refurbishing skeletons”.
Wild times in this writing room, I tell ya! Read more about it here.