Comedy writer Larry Charles says the Kanye West he met — when they almost worked on a project together — was a sweetheart and showed no signs of endorsing Nazism.
The “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” scribe tells Page Six in a recent exclusive interview that he met the “Stronger” rapper around 2008 when Charles was working on “Entourage.”
“He was like a sweet, funny, self-aware guy. He was very loose — this is pre-Kardashians,” Charles, 68, recalls, referencing West’s highly publicized marriage to Kim Kardashian from 2014 to 2022.
The “Borat” director says the first thing West said to him was, “I’m the Black Larry David.”
The actor, writer, director and producer famously co-created “Seinfeld” with Jerry Seinfeld, so Charles knows David very well.
“[West] was constantly telling me funny stories about putting his foot in his mouth and having to apologize.”
The two conceived a half-hour improvisational comedy based on the rapper’s life that was set to air on HBO.
“That show was kind of like him,” Charles shares. “His life as a comical horror story.”
JB Smoove of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” was set to co-star.
“Everybody got along great,” Charles says, “and [West] was wonderful to work with actually. And I even considered him a friend at that point.”
However, the project was axed when HBO passed on it, with Charles confessing that he often wonders how the 48-year-old’s life would have turned out had it been picked up.
“There’s all these little things, these little changes in life that sort of have these gigantic consequences,” he muses. “And so, again, he’s somebody who has veered off into this direction and clearly there are mental health issues.”
The Yeezy founder’s troubling behavior over the last couple of years has included wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe for an interview, praising Hitler and allegedly paying his wife, Bianca Censori, huge amounts of money to wear revealing outfits in public.
Despite the widespread dislike towards West, Charles says he feels sympathy for the rapper-turned-designer.
“He’s a golden goose and golden gooses in Hollywood are exploited,” he says about the troubled rapper. “Nobody steps up to help them and take them out of the limelight for a while and get them the help they need.”
“Instead, they continue to exploit them because they can make so much money.”
A rep for West didn’t immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
Charles recounts his time working with West and other boldfaced names, like Nicolas Cage, Bob Dylan, Sacha Baron-Cohen and Russell Brand, in his recently released memoir, “Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter.”