ENTERTAINMENTTed Danson Almost Didn't 'Forgive' Larry David for 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' Divorce Plotline, Says Author: He Was 'Very Upset'
Larry David and Ted Danson play frenemies on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'
Oct. 25 2026, Published 11:42 a.m. ET
Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm has always played fast and loose with the line between fantasy and reality. But Ted Danson, who played a fictionalized version of himself as the Seinfeld co-creator's frenemy on the show, said he had a hard time coming to terms with a plotline that landed a little too close to home.
On the show’s ninth season in 2017, Danson started dating David’s on-screen ex-wife Cheryl Hines. In reality, Danson has remained happily married to Mary Steenburgen for three decades.
'Are Ted and Mary Getting a Divorce?'
Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen are happily married in real life, but not on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'
According to Blake J. Harris, author of Emperor of Nothing: The Making of Larry David, Danson wasn’t happy with the situation.
“The internet lit up with people asking, ‘Are Ted and Mary getting a divorce?’” Harris related Danson as saying. “We had friends who we’d had dinner with a month before who started asking us, ‘Is this true? Are you guys okay?’
According to Harris, the legendary star of Cheers and The Good Place had to put a good face on it for the public.
'I Don't Know That I've Forgiven Him Quite Yet'
Ted Danson said he's had a hard time getting over his divorce plotline on 'Curb Your Enthusiasm.'
”I had to be lighthearted about it,” Harris related him as revealing. “‘Ah, you know, it’s all silly.’”
But underneath all that, he was seething. “I almost didn’t forgive Larry for that,” Hanson revealed via Harris. “For real. I really was very upset . . . And you know what? I don’t know that I’ve forgiven him quite yet.”
For her own part, Steenburgen handled it in good humor. “Yeah, right, we got divorced and decided to announce it on a sitcom!” she jibed sarcastically via Harris.
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'Why Aren't You Playing the Mother?'
Larry David's 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' plotlines often blur reality and television.
Steenburgen had known how complex the reality-versus-fantasy line could get ever since the first season in 2000, when she played opposite an actress playing her mother, and her real mother wasn’t happy.
“I got a call from my mother, my little Arkansas mother who had the thickest Arkansas accent possible, and she was upset,” Steenburgen admitted to Harris. “Because she had all these people asking her, ‘Why aren’t you playing the mother?’”
'It's Just Politics; It Makes Conversations'
Larry David and Ted Danson are tense on the show, but that didn't stop David from showing up for Steenburgen's Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony in 2009.
David has found the line difficult to navigate when on-screen marriage runs into the real world of politics. He hasn’t spoken to Hines for years as a result of her support for Donald Trump and her own real-life husband, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I think it’s just politics,” she said. “It makes conversations.”
