He passed on “Ace Ventura”. He passed on “Seinfeld”. David Alan Grier called himself out on live TV.
David Alan Grier sat down on NBC’s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle and basically handed us a reminder of how fast a Hollywood career can turn on a single bad read. He turned down Ace Ventura: Pet Detective because he thought the script was trash.
And he passed on Seinfeld because he sat across from Jerry Seinfeld in the audition room and thought — and I’m paraphrasing here — “this man cannot act and this will never work.”
He was wrong. Twice. Legendarily wrong.
Here’s the thing — it doesn’t change anything about his career now, actually. St. Denis Medical is already in Season 2 on NBC, renewed for Season 3, and Grier is a lead. He’s not sitting in regret. He literally laughed about it on national TV and said, “Well… wrong again! The bag was fumbled.”
That kind of self-awareness hits different when you know the guy has a Tony Award and a Grammy nomination on his shelf.
But what this does change is how we look at the legend of Ace Ventura and Seinfeld differently. Both projects looked like duds to people inside the room. Grier wasn’t some clueless outsider — he was a castmate of Jim Carrey’s on In Living Color.
He knew Carrey. And he still didn’t see it coming. That’s wild.
This kind of honest take usually gets clipped, shared, and debated across social media for a week. Expect the “George Costanza coulda been Black” discourse to make its full rounds on X (Twitter) again. It happens every few years anyway.
And honestly? Someone’s going to pitch a documentary about Hollywood’s “great missed roles” off the back of this. Just watch.
Grier telling this story with zero bitterness is actually the most impressive part. Most actors bury these regrets or spin them. He went on Today and called himself out flat — “the bag was fumbled.” That’s just straight-up confidence. The man landed back on NBC anyway, on his own terms. Sometimes the fumble just delays the touchdown.
So here’s what I keep thinking about — if Grier had taken George Costanza, does Seinfeld still become the defining sitcom of the ’90s? Or does the whole chemistry collapse?
