‘Seinfeld’: Raquel Welch Thought Playing a ‘Horrible Ball Breaker’ Was ‘So Much Fun’
One memorable performance from late actor and sex symbol Raquel Welch came when she played an aggressively amplified version of herself on Seinfeld in 1997. It allowed her to hilariously address longstanding rumors of being challenging to work with.
When asked about the guest appearance, Welch said it was “so much fun” to portray herself as a “horrible ball breaker,” adding she thought the part was written as more diva than villain. She also explained where her reputation for being “tempestuous” in real life might have originated and how it presented when she was a guest on Mork & Mindy.
On an episode of ‘Seinfeld,’ Raquel Welch played ‘a menace’ to Kramer and Elaine
In Welch’s appearance on Seinfeld, she leaned into the hilarity of a reputation for diva antics. She was in a particularly side-splitting episode called “The Summer of George,” referencing George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander, who didn’t crash Britney Spears’ wedding to Sam Ashgari, by the way.
Welch portrayed herself but with an extreme temper. In the episode, Michael Richardson’s Cosmo Kramer delivers news that she’s been fired from her lead role in a musical for not swinging her arms when she tap dances. Flustered, he tells her, “You’re like a gorilla out there,” and a fight ensues.
After Welch leaves Kramer, she finds Elaine Benes, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, on the street talking to two officers about a problem she has with a co-worker who — coincidentally — doesn’t swing her arms when she walks. Upon seeing Welch coming toward her, Elaine is starstruck, but Welch thinks she is making fun of her, and another battle breaks out.
As Kramer later declares, “The woman is a menace.”
Raquel Welch had ‘so much fun’ playing a ‘diva’ version of herself on ‘Seinfeld’
When asked about the guest appearance on Seinfeld by Men’s Health, Welch said, “That was so much fun,” noting, “I thought of her more as a diva than a villain.”
She offered, “It can be cathartic to play such a horrible ball breaker. But it’s also exhausting. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do it every day.”
Welch also responded to suggestions that she was “tempestuous” in real life, thus inspiring the version of her on Seinfeld, led by Jerry Seinfeld, who also played himself. First, she disagreed with the notion she was hot-headed because of having a Bolivian lineage. She told Men’s Health, “Bolivian blood isn’t a whole lot different than anybody else’s blood.”
“I do have Bolivian blood. My father was Bolivian, which makes me half-Bolivian,” she explained. “It’s where I got some of my exotic features and certainly my skin tone.”
However, she added, “I guess my … visceral reaction to everything is kind of tinged with the Latina chromosome. But I consider that a good thing.”
Raquel Welch’s diva reputation might have started with an appearance on ‘Mork & Mindy’
Casting director Joel Thurm recounted working with Welch in the ’70s in a memoir called Sex, Drugs & Pilot Season: Confessions of a Casting Director (per Page Six). The author recalled, “Welch was then on the downslide from movie stardom to TV roles,” appearing on Mork & Mindy with Robin Williams.
“This would have been an unsettling time for anyone in her position, and she acted out a bit during shooting, taking up extra time in hair and makeup, staying in her trailer a bit longer than necessary, and one day flat-out refusing to wear a certain costume,” Thurm added.
But according to Thur, Welch eventually owned up to her antics. He remembered her saying, “Look, I know I was a bit of a pain in the a**, but wasn’t I worth it?”
