Ready your cringe instincts now: Curb Your Enthusiasm’s long-awaited ninth season officially has a premiere date, with HBO announcing today that the comedy will return on October 1.
The fact that Curb will have a ninth season at all came as something of a surprise, given that the show hasn’t aired since 2011. Though season eight wasn’t officially the series’ last, five years passed before HBO and casually noncommittal creator and star Larry David formally announced that there would be more after all.
"In the immortal words of Julius Caesar, ‘I left, I did nothing, I returned,’” David said when HBO announced Curb’s ninth season back in June of 2016, keeping things exactly as wry as you’d expect from the man whose grimace has become his comedic signature.
Though we don’t yet know much about season nine, we do know that many of Curb’s original cast — most notably Susie Essman, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, J.B. Smoove, Cheryl Hines, and Jeff Garlin — will be back for more. The series started filming last November, as an HBO tease with Smoove trying to lure David out of his trailer revealed. (Unsurprising spoiler alert: He failed.)
Season 9 of #CurbYourEnthusiasm just started shooting and Larry couldn’t be more excited! @ohsnapjbsmoove pic.twitter.com/o1PWlndFBi
— HBO (@HBO) November 11, 2016
Lauren Graham, fresh off the Netflix revival of Gilmore Girls, is also joining Curb’s ninth season, in a recurring role. According to Graham, “this character is completely not me at all. I speak in a way that I don’t speak ever.”
Again, it’s unclear what Graham or anyone else involved with the series will really be up to this time around. But it’s a safe bet that the first Curb season to air in six years will have a lot to say about a lot of different things, and plenty of existential dread to work with.
