Jerry Seinfeld was terrified by the appearance of his close friend Judge Reinhold on Seinfeld

“Seinfeld” received many guest stars during its nine seasons. While many of them managed to antagonize the universe’s main characters, a select few got on the nerves of the real-life Jerry Seinfeld. Arguably the most famous example is Seinfeld’s feud with real-life “Soup Nazis.” But that was more about the character’s inspiration — famous soup chef Ali Yeganeh from Soup Kitchen International — who was insulted by the Seinfeld version rather than anything Larry Thomas (who played the fictional Yev “Soup Nazi” Kassem) did. However, one particular star did manage to stand up to Seinfeld…literally.

In the fifth season of the two-part “Seinfeld” series “The Raincoats,” Judge Reinhold plays Aaron, Elaine’s latest boyfriend who has an unfortunate tendency to stand too close to people when he talks. During his appearance on “Aizen’s rich show.” Reinhold revealed that when they rehearsed the scene, he couldn’t make it happen but he noticed that people seemed to be having a suspiciously good time when he was interacting with Seinfeld. This is because, unlike Reinhold at the time, they knew that the scene was truly star creepy. Here’s how Reinhold explained the situation:

“When I got to Jerry, I was the closest, and then the crew was laughing in a way that looked like something was going on. So we stopped for lunch or something and I said, ‘Why are you guys laughing?’ “It’s hard when I get to Jerry’s?” And they said because he’s a germaphobe, he’s terrified of what you’re doing.

As anyone who watched the episode knows well, the information that Jerry Seinfeld was genuinely stressed out by his character’s squirming in close-up conversation did not deter Judge Reinhold in the slightest. In fact, as he was quick to point out in the interview, he somehow found a way to get even closer to the series’ star when they actually filmed the scene, ensuring that Seinfeld’s creepy expressions didn’t require acting:

“So, of course, by the time the camera got there, I was almost touching his nose. I mean, our nose hairs were almost touching. I know he was very uncomfortable. If you see it again, you’ll see it’s just crawling in his skin.”

Many “Seinfeld” movies have interesting stories behind them. Philip Baker Hall said his life changed after playing Lieutenant Joe Buckmanthe library cop in the third season of Seinfeld, “The Library.” At the other end of the spectrum, Bob Odenkirk had never watched “Seinfeld” before When he agreed to play Elaine’s hapless medical student boyfriend Ben in the season 8 episode “Abstinence”. However, only Reinhold can say that he spent a significant portion of his appearance on the legendary sitcom in Jerry Seinfeld’s personal space.