Wayne Knight's Newman First Appeared on Seinfeld 29 Years Ago Today

On January 29, 1992, Seinfeld introduced Jerry's archnemesis, the mailman known as Newman, on screen for the first time.

Newman was referenced off-screen once before, in the Season 2 episode "The Revenge," as a friend of Kramer who keeps pestering him with bogus suicide threats. So it's perhaps fitting that it's in a theSeason 3 episode "The Suicide" that Wayne Knight first shows his face. 

It's a fairly dark premise for Seinfeld: Jerry's neighbor Martin attempts suicide, but instead ends up in a coma. Martin's wife Gina then quickly proceeds to hit on Jerry at the hospital, which he puts off until they're NOT in the hospital. Newman, the building snitch at the time, sees Jerry and Gina together and threatens to tell Martin when he wakes up. In the clip above, Jerry bribes him into silence with a full-size Drake's Coffee Cake.

In the below clip, Seinfeld, Knight, and Larry David, who provided Newman's voice for the Season 2 episode, discuss the genesis of the character and why he became Jerry's nemesis. 

People are talking about Seinfeld in our forums. Join the conversation.

Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.