Jason Alexander reveals why he threatened to quit Seinfeld

Jason Alexander (left) says he nearly quit Seinfeld in season 2. Photo / supplied

Jason Alexander has revealed he threatened to quit Seinfeld while working on the hit comedy's second season.

The actor who played George Costanza was frustrated by the storyline of an episode in the show's second season and told co-creator Larry David that he might walk away.

"Very early on Larry wrote an episode where Elaine and Jerry go to Florida and Kramer and George are not in that episode," Alexander said to Access Hollywood.

"And when Seinfeld started I had a very successful career in the theatre in New York which is what I thought I was going to be doing all my life.

"So when I was written out of an episode I came back the next week and I said to Larry, 'Look, I get it. But if you do that again, do it permanently. If you don't need me to be here every week ... I'd just as soon go back home and do what I was doing'."

Luckily, Larry David took the feedback on board.

"He freaked out," Alexander said of David's reaction, "and then he did it and thank god he didn't say, 'take a hike'".

Seinfeld is now considered one of the greatest TV shows in history, but Alexander admitted it wasn't until an episode in season four that the actors knew they were onto a good thing.

"The Contest [an episode where the four main characters bet to see who can go the longest without pleasuring themselves] ... I think that was the marker where we went, 'I think we have some job security for a while'", he said.