Larry David told Chris Wallace to curb his enthusiasm over asking about the comedian’s net worth — and made a crass reference to the late Barbara Walters’ sex life during a contentious interview.
The curmudgeonly comic — who stars in the hit HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and was the co-creator of the classic sitcom “Seinfeld — didn’t appreciate the line of questioning by the CNN host during their sit-down for a recent episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which streams on Max.
“None of your f–king business,” David replied during a testy change in which he also told Wallace to “shut up” when he pressed him for an answer, according to a transcript of the interview that was reported by Mediaite.
Wallace told David that he read on the internet that the “Seinfeld” co-creator’s fortune was around half a billion dollars — a figure that didn’t sound too far-fetched considering a recent report that put his pal Jerry Seinfeld’s net worth at $1 billion.
“That number is so preposterous, okay?” David replied. “Ridiculous.”
“How about $100 million?” Wallace then asked, prompting David to reply: “Okay, how about you shut up? Okay. How about you shut up? Is that alright?”
Wallace told David that in the scores of interviews he has done for television, “nobody’s ever said that to me.”
“Well just shut up,” David replied.
Wallace awkwardly steered the conversation back to David’s comedy career, though later in the interview the host admitted he was “trying to get over the shut up” because “it stings.”
“I’d say it’s a little hurtful,” Wallace told David.
The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” star then replied: “Hurtful? What about your question? What kind of question is that?”
“It’s a perfectly legitimate ,” Wallace told David. He then invoked Walters, quoting her as once saying that “there’s no such thing as an indiscreet question. There are only indiscreet answers.”
David said he didn’t think that statement was true, adding: “I wonder how Barbara Walter would react…[if someone asked her], ‘Barbara, how many times a week do you have sex with your husband? Do you give him head?’”
“Do you think she would like that?” David asked Wallace.
Wallace replied that she would probably say “none of your business” but that “I don’t think she would have said shut up.”
The Post has sought comment from Wallace, David and Walters’ family.
Walters, the first female television news anchor in the US, died in December 2022. She was 93 years old.
Last week, Bloomberg Billionaires Index valued Jerry Seinfeld’s wealth for the first time as the standup comedian’s net worth reportedly cracked the ten-digit mark.
In 2015, Forbes reported that David had a net worth “in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Before David divorced his then-wife Laurie Lennard in 2007, some reports estimated his wealth to be as high as $900 million.
