Who is Newman in Seinfeld?

Show

Seinfeld

Played by

Wayne Knight

First episode

“The Suicide”Season 3, Episode 15, aired January 29, 1992

Role

Side character

Network

NBC

Occupation

U.S. Postal Service mail carrier

Show run

1989 to 1998

Newman is the mail carrier who lives in Jerry's building and is, as far as Jerry is concerned, his sworn enemy. Wayne Knight plays him with a gleeful, villainous relish that made him one of the most beloved side characters on TV.

On Seinfeld, Newman's story runs through Jerry Seinfeld (Nemesis), Cosmo Kramer (Best Friend), George Costanza (Neighbor's Friend), Elaine Benes (Acquaintance), and Frank Costanza.

Who is Newman?

Newman lives in the same apartment building as Jerry and Kramer and works as a letter carrier for the United States Postal Service. He is Kramer's close friend and frequent business partner, and Jerry cannot stand him. The feeling is entirely mutual.

The show never gives him a first name. He is simply Newman, a round, sweaty, theatrical schemer who treats every small grudge like an epic struggle between good and evil, with himself cast as the misunderstood genius.

Personality and comedy

The heart of the character is the rivalry. Jerry greets him with a curt "Hello, Newman," and Newman answers with an equally fake "Hello, Jerry," a two-line exchange that became one of the show's best-known running gags. Newman is petty, food-obsessed, and dramatic, and he delivers even simple lines like a villain in an old melodrama.

He is also a terrible mail carrier and proud of it. When his job is first revealed in "The Old Man," he launches into a dramatic rant about how the mail never stops coming, and he treats the postal service as a place to hide rather than a place to work.

Key storylines

Newman is first only an offscreen voice in season two. He appears on screen for the first time in "The Suicide," where he catches Jerry with a neighbor's girlfriend and has to be bribed with coffee cake to keep quiet, then sells Jerry out anyway.

His biggest adventure comes in "The Bottle Deposit," when he and Kramer borrow a postal truck to haul empty bottles to Michigan, where the deposit is worth more. The plan falls apart on the highway, Newman gets dumped from the truck, and he ends up thrown out of a farmhouse by an angry farmer. In the finale, after Jerry refuses to bring him along to Paris, Newman delivers one last villainous warning that Jerry's day of reckoning is coming.

Behind the scenes and legacy

In "The Revenge," the voice of the unseen Newman was provided by co-creator Larry David. Wayne Knight later re-recorded those lines for syndicated reruns and played the role on screen from 1992 through the 1998 finale. Knight is also known for roles in Jurassic Park and 3rd Rock from the Sun.

Newman is a fixture of best sitcom villain lists. Rolling Stone ranked him 16th on its 2016 list of the 40 greatest TV villains of all time, an impressive showing for a man who mostly just sorts mail.

Newman: frequently asked questions

All Seinfeld charactersEssential Seinfeld episodesSeinfeld triviaMore 1990s sitcom characters

All sitcom characters A to Z