John P. Johnson/courtesy of HBO(LOS ANGELES) — We’ve reported that The Simpsons takes the cake among long-running shows that seemingly prophetically predicted some major real-life events, but the real-life world of COVID-19 came into play regarding the season 10 finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The episode centers on Larry David’s alter-ego Larry David opening a pop-up coffee shop called Latte Larry’s to spite another coffee shop owner.
However, germophobe Larry’s personal touches — namely tons of hand sanitizer — actually leads to the shop burning down.
The episode was wrapped months ago, but executive producer Jeff Schaffer revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that they recently built a real-life version of David’s shop as a promotion, but they quickly ran into trouble.
“[O]ur production design team was building Latte Larry’s again and they said they couldn’t find any Purell,” Schaffer tells the trade. “[So] they were going to make fake Purell with labels. But then we realized people were going to be stealing fake Purell from the store.”
With lock-downs and social distancing orders, the pop-up was scrapped anyway, Schaffer says. He offered, “Hopefully, maybe in brighter days, we’ll be able to have our Latte Larry’s pop-up.”
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