Seth Rogen may be playing a high-powered Hollywood studio executive in his latest project, but he will never forget his roots.
The “Superbad” actor and comedian was just a teenager when his first-ever TV series “Freaks and Geeks” never made it past its first season, giving him his first true taste of how quickly luck can change according to the whims of the Hollywood machine.
“My first experience in all of Hollywood was making something great (“Freaks and Geeks”) that no one wanted and was instantly canceled, so that was a good tone setter,” Rogen jokingly told Esquire magazine in a new interview published Tuesday.
The 1999-2000 series has since become a beloved cult classic. It starred Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps and Martin Starr, among others, and followed a group of misfit high school students who have big dreams and even bigger bullies to contend with.
Despite the show lasting only one season before its cancellation, Rogen said the experience still taught him a lesson he carries today.
“You can do everything right and still fail,” he said. “You can do the best work there is, and it doesn’t mean anyone’s going to watch it.”
In an upcoming project, the “Knocked Up” star is playing a character drastically different from his “Freaks and Geeks” character Ken Miller, who Rogen believes that 25 years later is probably now just “a statistic, unfortunately.”
Rogen plays the head of a movie studio in AppleTV+’s new comedy “The Studio,” who he says “really loves movies but is afraid he is going to make them worse.”
“The Studio” follows Matt Remick (Rogen), who is the newly appointed head of a fictional movie studio that is desperate for the approval of celebrities and has to juggle corporate demands with creative ambitions to get movies onto the big screen.
Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz and Catherine O’Hara, among others, round out the cast.
“The Studio” will be available to stream on AppleTV+ in March.
