Flula Borg’s Curb Your Enthusiasm Character Ernst Explained

Here’s Flula Borg’s Curb Your Enthusiasm character Ernst and his role in the show’s season 9 finale explained. After a six-year hiatus, HBO’s cringe comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm returned for its ninth season in 2017 with one of its most audacious story arcs to date. The first episode of the season revealed Larry David had penned a musical comedy titled Fatwa!, inspired by Salman Rushdie’s life after Ayatollah Khomeini called for his assassination following the publication of his controversial 1988 novel The Satanic Verses.

After promoting his musical on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Larry unsurprisingly managed to offend the current Ayatollah and found himself on the receiving end of his very own fatwa. The premise lent itself to some brilliant Curb Your Enthusiasm cameos, including Rushdie himself who advised Larry to ditch the ridiculous disguise he’d been sporting and embrace having a fatwa on his head as women find the aura of danger attractive – which seems to work when Larry catches the eye of fellow guest star Elizabeth Banks.

Towards the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9, Larry had his fatwa revoked and his musical comedy chugged ahead. This resulted in more hilarious cameos in the form of Broadway sensation Lin-Manuel Miranda – who was brought on board to play Salman Rushdie and ended up taking over the production – and screen legend F. Murray Abraham, who was cast in the role of the Ayatollah. Tensions soon rose between Larry and Lin-Manuel Miranda and German actor-comedian Flula Borg’s Curb Your Enthusiasm character played a big part in the souring of their relationship.

Flula Borg appeared in the Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9 finale playing the part of Ernst, the husband of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s cousin Valentina (Tipper Newton) who was in town with her spouse to see a preview of the Fatwa! musical. When their Airbnb accommodation fell through, Larry was coaxed into letting Ernst and Valentina stay at his house by Lin-Manuel who described them as “a really interesting couple.”  This turned out to be an understatement when it transpired that Ernst and Valentina were swingers and held a wild party that left Larry’s house trashed.

The incident brought things to a head at the end of the Curb Your Enthusiasm season finale during a morale-boosting paintball game Larry hosted for the Fatwa! cast and crew. There, Larry unloaded on Lin-Manuel and denounced his family as “perverts” which culminated in a Hamilton-style duel that saw Larry accidentally shoot a paintball into Miranda’s mouth and effectively crush any remaining chance there was of Fatwa! making it to opening night in the process.