Leave it to Larry David, who championed pickleball on Curb Your Enthusiasm, to ride the mahjong wave. During a March YES Network commercial, David calls Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay in a tailspin when he can’t find the game on TV, finally snapping, “I won’t watch it. I’ll play mahjong! I don’t care.” Kay asks dubiously, “You play mahjong?” — an opening for David’s line-gone-viral: “What, are you too cool for mahjong?”
Turns out David and his wife, Ashley Underwood, are quietly learning the game IRL in Montecito, where Meghan Markle clacks tiles with her own “mahj squad,” which consists of fashion designer Tracy James Robbins (wife of Brian Robbins), cosmetics entrepreneur Victoria Jackson and former WME agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh. Godmothers bookstore in Summerland, co-owned by Jackson and Walsh, offers mahj games and lessons.
A pastime dating back to 1800s China, “old style” mahjong had a resurgence in the 1920s after Standard Oil exec Joseph Park Babcock returned from a decade in the country and teamed with Abercrombie & Fitch to sell imported sets. Then he taught Douglas Fairbanks how to play. Soon President Warren G. Harding and first lady Florence Harding were clicking tiles in the White House. In 1926, siblings Fred and Adele Astaire were photographed at a mahjong table in London, as they headlined the musical feature Lady, Be Good!
