"When Mark Twain first emailed me about the Mark Twain prize, I have to admit I totally misunderstood," the Veep and Seinfeld star, the sixth woman to receive the Mark Twain prize, said after a night devoted to her at the Kennedy Center. "I thought I was being asked to honor someone else. What a hassle. I have to go all the way to Washington, D.C., and make up flattering things to say about how funny someone else is. And then I realized. It’s me. I get the prize, and my attitude about the whole thing changed. It really did. This is a great night, a great honor. Anybody would be lucky to be part of a night like this honoring someone like me.” Throughout the night, which will be broadcast on PBS on Nov. 19, Louis-Dreyfus was feted and roasted by comedies biggest names, from former co-star Jerry Seinfeld to Tina Fey, Keegan-Michael Key, Kumail Nanjiani, Stephen Colbert, Lisa Kudrow, Broad City's Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. Larry David, who worked with Louis-Dreyfus on SNL and tapped her for Seinfeld, joked about her recent cancer battle via video. "I want to congratulate Julia for this unbelievably prestigious award," the David said. "But I gotta say, the lengths that she went through to get it, frankly I was a little surprised... that whole cancer thing? Cancer? Honestly, I gotta take my hat off to her. What a scam." Jerry Seinfeld, meanwhile, credited Louis-Dreyfus for making his career. “I could not get enough of her,” Seinfeld said of their partnership on screen. “That whole time, nine years, I was not acting. I couldn’t.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus accepts the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
