Acting isn’t something Andrew Clubok, ’93, pursued past high school drama class. But his legal experience led to a role in episode 3 of Larry David’s sketch comedy series Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness: An Almost History of America. He plays US Sen. Charles Potter of Michigan.
As partner and global chair of Latham & Watkins’s securities and mergers and acquisitions litigation practice, Clubok has represented a wide variety of clients, from the “big three” automakers to the NAACP and underrepresented voters in a pro bono case. He represented David in a securities case following a 2022 Super Bowl ad for the cryptocurrency exchange FTX that David—and other celebrities, including Tom Brady—appeared in.
Around the same time, David was filming the last season of his show Curb Your Enthusiasm, which revolved around a legal dispute. He hired Clubok as a legal consultant, and Clubok was on set for the week it took to film the last episode, a courtroom scene. “I was asked to give them advice about what it would be like running up to trial and what happens during a trial,” he said.
Although Curb Your Enthusiasm used scripts, much of what ended up in the show was improvised, Clubok said. “They would come to points where they’d be like: Hey, what would the judge say now, or what would a lawyer say now? And I got to give some suggestions, some of which actually made their way into the show.”
Because that final episode was a callback to the final episode of Seinfeld, for which David was head writer, Clubok felt like he was part of a historic TV moment, he said.
Time on screen
When Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness came along, Clubok got a call from its director, Jeff Schaffer, to see if he wanted to be in an episode. (Schaffer, an Ann Arbor native and die-hard Michigan fan, has attended U-M football games with Clubok.)
Clubok thought it would be fun, so he agreed. Initially, he assumed he would be an extra. “I thought, this is cool. They’ll let me be up in the background, and maybe I’ll get on camera a little bit,” he said. “I didn’t realize until a couple days before, when they said I had to go for a fitting for wardrobe and I had to plan time for makeup, that this might be more than just being an extra.”
Clubok played Sen. Potter in a 1950s McCarthy hearing. As someone who grew up in Michigan, he said, “That was kind of an awesome dream come true to be a senator for Michigan. I’m not a senator for Michigan, but I played one on TV, I can always say.”
Clubok doesn’t plan to head to Hollywood and leave the law behind. “This was kind of a random, once-in-a-lifetime shot, but it worked out great. It’s also terrifying,” because he wasn’t sure what would end up in the episode, he said. “It was a six- or seven-minute clip, but it took all day to film, because we just kept running takes and trying different things.”
Since the episode aired, people have been telling Clubok he did a great job. His response has been: “Well, it’s because I wasn’t really acting that much. Most of it was just natural improv and how I would react if I was really there. If they gave me lines to read or I tried to do something that I was told to do, I wasn’t very good.”
Still, Clubok said, “Shout out to Carol Patterson, my high school drama teacher. I was not a very good student in that class, and I never thought I would really use it, but I did find myself trying to use some of the stuff I learned back then.”
One challenge: It was hard not to laugh on set, he said. “The folks on that show are hilarious. Larry, I think, is one of the funniest people on the planet. Almost everything he says makes me laugh.”
Skills that overlap
Speaking to a jury is similar to speaking to an audience, Clubok said. As a trial lawyer, “when you put on a trial, frankly, you’re kind of like a director in many ways—and a director in a show that you’re starring in at some point,” he said. “There’s a lot of similarities between some of the blocking you do and the things they do in a movie or a play to direct everything toward the audience.”
For the kind of improv Clubok did on camera, “being a lawyer is pretty good experience. You’re improv-ing all the time,” he said. “If you have a judge who’s asking you all kinds of questions that are unexpected, if witnesses say unexpected things and it’s off script and you suddenly have to basically say ‘yes, and,’ just like you do in improv, those kinds of skills translate pretty well.”