Seinfeld Used A Season 9 Moment To Retcon Kramer's Original Pilot Name
What would "Seinfeld" be without Kramer? The enduring sitcom about nothing thrived on the sheer watchability of its four leads -— Jerry Seinfeld's Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Elaine Benes, Jason Alexander's George Costanza, and Michael Richards' Cosmo Kramer. From the beginning, each character's personality was sharply honed by series creators Larry David and Seinfeld, and each character's relationships with the others deepened and developed as the series spanned across the 1990s, ballooning to 180 total episodes.
Kramer was always the show's X factor. Jerry provided the services an anchor character needs to deliver — be the straight man, the locus from which all storylines issue and return, and, because this was the '90s, a ladies' man. George meanwhile could be relied on to panic, fret, and comically blow his fuse, and Elaine, honestly, was just a vessel for whatever the comic genius Julia Louis-Dreyfus wanted to do. But Dreyfus was never wild or unpredictable. No character on "Seinfeld" was, because Kramer maxed out the show's wild credit on every single episode.
Kramer's madcap, nonsensical, and often pure-hearted antics were a constant source of comic relief when Jerry, Elaine, or George's work and dating troubles threatened to get too real. Kramer always shunted the series back firmly into its unique niche of a hybrid between the mundane and the absurd — with the rest of the characters chipping into the mundane, and Kramer providing all the absurd. Even his name — Cosmo Kramer — tells you exactly what you're going to get from him. But funnily enough, that wasn't the original plan for the character's name.
The Kessler Chronicles
In the pilot episode of "Seinfeld," Kramer is actually called Kessler. He's only called it once by Jerry, and by episode 2 he's already being called Kramer. There's so much else off about the first episode of "Seinfeld" anyways — Elaine never appears! — that even the most eagle-eyed "Seinfeld" fan would be forgiven for never picking up on the name change. But why did it happen?
A featurette posted to the official "Seinfeld" Facebook page in 2019 explained that series creator Larry David based Kramer on his eccentric real-life neighbor, Kenny Kramer. "Seinfeld" famously pulled in direct, winking ways from real life. Jerry Seinfeld is playing a version of himself, Larry David apparently based George on himself, and Elaine was based on David's former girlfriend, Monica Yates, daughter of the legendary writer Richard Yates. Seinfeld and David obviously were in the room to consent to the imitation, and as David's longtime friend, Yates most likely had no issue with the effervescently charming Elaine. But David and Seinfeld were worried the real-life Kramer wouldn't appreciate being parodied in such an extreme way.
The story goes that Kenny Kramer petitioned to play himself on the show, but settled for a $1,000 payoff for "Seinfeld" to use the name, because the cast all thought it was such a better fit for the character than Kessler. Years later, in the season 9 episode "The Betrayal," the series flashes back to Seinfeld and Kramer's first meeting, in which Jerry says, "I saw your name on the buzzer, you must be Kessler." "No, actually, it's Kramer," Richards replies, to the laughter of the knowing audience.
As "Seinfeld" went along, it began to make more and more jokes like this about its own origins, culminating in the divisive two-part finale, in which all of the gang's terrible actions, done in irreverence, are thrown into the cold, unfeeling light of the law. At least one of those crimes wasn't letting Richards' character remain named Kessler.