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Despite the many interested parties, everyone says the answer rested solely with Seinfeld--as he puts it, "This was between me and the show." The decision, when it finally came, was based on one of those peculiar divinations that Seinfeld thrives on. "I felt ... the Moment. That's the only way I can describe it," Seinfeld explains in the tone of voice the TV Jerry might use to delineate a date's faux pas. "I just know from being onstage for years and years and years, there's one moment where you have to feel the audience is still having a great time, and if you get off right there, they walk out of the theater excited. And yet, if you wait a little bit longer and try to give them more for their money, they walk out feeling not as good. If I get off now I have a chance at a standing ovation. That's what you go for."
Most times, of course, you also go for money. But Seinfeld insists recompense was not a consideration despite NBC's reported offer of an unprecedented $5 million a show if he would return for another season. Seinfeld refuses to confirm the figure. "I don't really care about the money," he insists. "In my business, the only way you get as much money as I have"--Forbes put his earnings last year at $66 million--"is if you don't care about money and you care about comedy; then somehow you end up with money. I'm not the kind of person who could do a show and think, 'Well, we've kind of run out of gas here, but the money's great and the ratings are still good, so let's keep grinding them out.' It would break my heart."
Two days after his meeting with Welch and Wright, Seinfeld phoned Wright and gave him the news personally. Telling his co-stars had been a more loaded proposition, given their bonds as an ensemble and the fact that while Robert Wright still has a job, Michael Richards, for one, soon won't. Complicating things further was the fact that Richards, Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus had only recently received huge raises after a much publicized and, by some accounts, bitter holdout before the start of the current season. Their meeting took place Dec. 17 in Seinfeld's dressing room, where the cast traditionally assembles before the last taping of the calendar year to take stock of things. "It was pretty heavy, pretty wild," recalls Louis-Dreyfus. "There were no tears shed, but there was a lot of heart thumping." Seinfeld was relieved to find the cast agreed with him: "They just started making good money last year, but they were generous enough to respect the timing of the curve--not that they could have talked me out of it, I don't think."
There was no question in anybody's mind when the four of us sat down that it was time to go," agrees Alexander. Richards says the sheer exhaustion involved in making the labor-intensive show was a factor: "I've been taking note of how everyone was working and the difficulties of maintaining the show each week. It was becoming work, real work, and we were losing our sense of play. After 12 episodes, Jerry was weary. To think about coming back and doing another year--he doubted he could. And he never wanted that weariness to affect the show. That was his greatest fear."