In 2000, when Seth Rogen and his creative partner Evan Goldberg were just starting out in Hollywood, they met with a studio executive who made a cynical confession: He said that although he had entered the profession because he loved movies, he felt his job was to ruin them.
The sentiment stuck with Rogen, and now he and Goldberg have made it the basis of their new Apple TV+ comedy series, The Studio. In it, Rogen plays a flustered Hollywood executive who gets an unexpected promotion as the head of a movie studio after his boss is fired.
Studio executives are charged with deciding which projects get greenlit, and which get scrapped. They also give notes to creatives that are supposed to help their films become better — or, more specifically, be financially successful. Rogen and Goldberg interviewed a number of studio executives while creating the show, any many of their observations made it into the series.
"It's a very tragic job, and I think tragedy is comedy in a lot of ways," Rogen says of the role. "They have to say things that make me really mad at them and I would imagine that's a huge bummer — and I've seen it over and over."
Rogen has produced, directed, written and starred in many films, including Superbad, Knocked Up and Pineapple Express. He's had executives tell him his work is too dirty or not funny enough. Now, as The Studio's premiere date (March 26) approaches, he admits to feeling nervous.
"I honestly don't think I've had the stomach to put myself like this front and center in something in a long time because it's just scary," he says. "If no one likes the things I do that really makes me unhappy and so I know I'm setting myself up for a real emotional crossroads, potentially. … I wish I wasn't so emotionally affected by it."
Rogen says the film industry tends to be risk averse — with executives acting out of fear of being fired. As for that studio executive he and Goldberg spoke to 25 years ago? "He stuck around," Rogen says. "That person still works in Hollywood, is one of the heads of one of the major studios in Hollywood."
Interview highlights
On his character in The Studio
I would describe my character as someone who grew up loving movies and who worked very hard to be someone who got to make movies and I think he's someone who wishes he was very creative, but is not and who kind of views himself as creative, but simply isn't. And so his avenue to "filmmaking," I guess, became being a studio executive and he's very ambitious and very self-preservational and someone who generally will do the thing that, again, allows him to keep going rather than to perhaps lose it all. And in light of that, he's someone who's constantly put in a position to really disappoint both himself and the people that he idolizes and the medium that he idolizes.
He's very panicked and stressed out and wears it on his sleeve. … That's a thing that I actually have seen from a lot of these [studio execs]. And that's based on some specific people I know — they wear their panic clearly, they have a bad poker face. And that is very much something my character has as someone who is never trying to calm a situation and always subscribing to like the worst case scenario, basically.
On getting people like Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard to do cameos on The Studio
One of the reasons I think I was so nervous leading up to the show premiering and seeing how it was going to be received is that … I talked all these people — people I idolize, people I'm huge fans of, people I've always wanted to work with — into doing this thing and I don't want to let them down. I don't want them to be mad at me [or to] feel like they wasted their time or I made them look stupid. … It's meta in many, many ways, but that is a real thing that I relate to my character on is that like I get to work with these people that I've idolized my whole life or people that I've recently become huge fans of and I see are like the next wave of talent and if I get the chance to work with them, I don't want them to hate me.
On satirizing studio concerns about being seen as racist
All people care about is the perception. They themselves have no ideological thing that they are trying to get across and they don't care at all. They just don't want to look bad. … You just don't want to get in trouble. I've been in those situations a lot of times — sometimes very nuanced, sometimes not at all nuanced — like elements involving race or religion or something like that and you could see people freak out and they're just like, "How do we not look bad? How do we not have this be the thing that everyone focuses on?" …
We were making a comic book and there was an alien character. The alien had been traditionally voiced by someone of a certain race, and so all of a sudden that became a big topic of conversation. It was like, what race is this alien? And then we kept it like, well, it's an alien, but it didn't matter because in people's heads there was a certain race ascribed to the alien due to the voice that people associated with the alien. And then we were like, well, is that racist?
On what he learned from sitting in on a studio notes meeting for Freaks and Geeks with Judd Apatow
[Apatow] let me sit in on a on like a notes call from the network, which was NBC at the time, at like the peak of like network television dominance, and he was like, "We're gonna get a notes call and just know that like, these people are panicked, they're gonna lose their jobs every second of every day. And that is what's motivating, like a lot of the stuff they say to us."
And it really is a founded fear, which is why I think I'm also somewhat sympathetic to these people is that they really could get fired at any moment for anything. Not a lot of jobs are like that. … It's based on art and money and it's based on politics and cutthroat dynamics and an industry that is relatively new, and does not have a very set way of doing things and so is constantly searching to invent the most functional version of itself.
On his early career success with creative partner Evan Goldberg
We had a pretty unprecedented run of hits. And so I think I came into making movies, especially with a pretty distorted view of success. Now as I've gotten older I see that that is not a normal thing that happens in one's career. I think because of that, I take much less for granted. I'm happy when anything good happens. I'm expecting bad things to happen, generally speaking. I have been blindsided so many times over the years. … I was so nervous before the show premiered last week, and I'm very proud of the show and I worked so hard on it. … I just don't take any of it for granted.
On the secret to his recent "glow up"
I think I just realized at one point that like, because you're a comedian, every time you do a photoshoot, they try to make you look like a buffoon. And I feel like there was a moment where I was like, what if instead of me looking sort of good, but also kind of dumb, I just actually like put on nice clothes and you took my picture like you do every other person who is in these magazines, and you don't try to subvert it in some way and you don't, like, try to make me look good, but then also, like, throw a pie on my face or something like that? Like, what if I actually just got the "photo shoot treatment" as you put me on the cover of your magazine? That was really it. It's funny, because afterwards I remember another comedian coming up to me ... being like, "What did you do?" And I was like, "I just told him I didn't want to look stupid." … I feel like I used to be called "schlubby" all the time. And now that doesn't happen as much.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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