Seth Rogen on His New Series, “The Studio” & Writing From Life

Hanging in the Los Angeles offices of Point Grey Pictures, a large brown paper roll sits above Seth Rogen’s head. Written in bold colourful letters, the title “Big Ideas” runs across the top, with scrawls of illegible writing underneath (presumably the big ideas). As he lights a joint to kick off our interview, it strikes me that someone unfamiliar with Rogen’s work might assume the list to be stereotypical weed-induced daydreaming (concepts for the next great mobile app, or a new fast-food secret menu item). But sitting in the movie studio he co-founded, preparing to discuss his most ambitious and star-studded project yet, it’s clear that for Rogen, the subject of big ideas is serious business.

In the opening scene of Rogen’s upcoming AppleTV+ series, The Studio, Matt Remick — an executive at Continental Studios, played by Rogen — rushes past a tour group. As he hurries into Continental’s towering offices, a guide’s voice trails in the background. “The building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1927, in his signature Mayan revival style,” she explains. “It was made to be a literal temple of cinema.” Rogen’s character rolls his eyes until, mere minutes later, he finds himself named the high priest (studio head) of cinema (Continental Studios).

Through The Studio’s first season, Rogen’s character proves desperate to be liked, caught impossibly between creativity and commerce, and above all, terrified of ruining a film industry he holds so dear. In many ways, The Studio is as much a love story to show business as it is a biting satire. Created alongside his childhood best friend, long-time writing partner, and Point Grey co-founder, Evan Goldberg, it’s a story that once again looks inwardly at Rogen’s own life.

“I was shooting The Fabelmans and I was just really inspired by how personal the movie was and how it was unabashedly ripped from Steven [Spielberg]’s life,” Rogen explains. “And I remember thinking it would be nice to do something really personal again. We looked at our own lives and thought, ‘How do we turn this into something,’ you know? Superbad was based on our experiences, so it’s always a well that we enjoy going to.”

Rogen and Goldberg were 13 when they wrote Superbad, a chronicle of their high school experiences in Vancouver written 12 years before the film was eventually released. At the time, it was just one of many big ideas in the works for the duo between house parties and marathon reviewing sessions of The Larry Sanders Show. Fastforward 18 years, and the film remains a transcendent coming-of-age comedy. Today, Rogen and Goldberg’s instinct to parody their lives hasn’t changed, but their point of view certainly has.

Now, whenever they dream up a big idea (which is almost constantly — the pair has around half a dozen shows currently on-air and several films in the pipeline), they have a team of people eagerly rushing to support them. They have the ear of Hollywood’s biggest stars and most influential directors. They’re the bosses now. That doesn’t mean Rogen is without anxieties — they’re just wrapped up in nicer suits and a corner office.

“There was a meeting with an executive who was giving us notes when we were young who said, ‘I got into this because I love movies and now it’s my job to ruin them,’ ” explains Rogen. His character, Matt, echoes this very sentiment, verbatim, early in the series. “That one sentence really resonated heavily with us. Most importantly, we started to view it as being very comedic, like, it’s a very funny dynamic if you love movies and the people associated with them. A lot of these people who work at studios just want to be liked by the filmmakers and the actors and the writers, and they just want to feel as though they’re part of the creative side of things. But at the same time, they’re constantly having to do things for their own self-preservation.”

Rogen’s crash course in show business began when he was a teenager under the wing of Judd Apatow during the brief but beloved run of Freaks and Geeks. The show was in constant threat of being axed by NBC executives, meaning, for a 16-year-old just entering the industry, those suits represented little more than soulless machines ready to terminate creativity at the drop of a hat. Today, the dynamic is far more nuanced for Rogen. Yes, he’s had his run-ins with studio heads (and a few government authorities) during the release of controversial comedies like The Interview. But for the most part, he views them all as various degrees of Matt Remick — a man just trying his best to not kill cinema.

“I do feel like I get them much more now,” says Rogen, reflecting on the teenaged version of himself anxiously toeing the line between “breakout star” and “out-of-work high school dropout.” “I’m now older than a lot of the execs that I’m dealing with, which is a huge dynamic shift. And that’s actually helpful in some ways. Like, I’m so used to being 20 years younger than the people that I’m reporting to that it only reaffirms this subservient dynamic. And I think now that I’m older, you start to view it much more of like, ‘These are people I work with and together we have to make a good thing.’ And they want it to be good, but they also don’t want to get fired. And that was a thing that I remember even when I was 16, Judd telling me about the executives. He was like, ‘They’re all just panicked.’”

When it comes to The Studio, “panic” is the operative word. And it’s not just Rogen’s character — for a space described as “a temple of cinema,” there is a distinct lack of tranquility flowing through the building; assistants, actors, directors, executives, and interns alike scramble desperately for survival. Even the way it’s shot evokes hysteria, with beautiful, long tracking shots capturing the chaotic, kinetic energy. If it feels a bit like a circus, then that just means Rogen and Goldberg hit the nail on the head.

“It’s different than a lot of jobs, like, if you’re the CEO of a company, often, you will not just be unceremoniously fired after six months of having that job,” he laughs. “But if you run a movie studio, that happens. I know people [who] ran movie studios for like six months. And so, there’s this uneasy panic of manic energy to all of it where they just know, ‘I want this thing to be good and I don’t want to alienate the people making it. But, if it’s bad, I don’t want to be held responsible for it. And at the same time, if it’s really good, I want to be close enough to it that I’m able to associate myself with the success and elevate my own stature.’ Now, I’m close friends with some executives at these studios. I’ve known Donna Langley for 20 years at this point, you know what I mean? And you start to see a lot of them are also really smart and good at their jobs and make great films and actually help make them better, not worse.”

But that perspective can only come with time. In the decades following Freaks and Geeks, Rogen’s had countless projects greenlit, received mixed feedback from studios, hit a few catastrophic roadblocks, and grown as a result. Throughout their careers, he and Goldberg have held a sixth sense for the right time to release their work. Similar to the 12-year gap between writing and filming Superbad, they waited seven years between writing and releasing Pineapple Express, a film whose commercial success reframed the way the pair were viewed by studios. Now, those tireless hours spent alongside executives are paying dividends as both writers and directors.

“This was the first time that we wanted to do something that was incredibly, technically different from what we had done before, in the hopes it would help tell the story in a more effective way,” he explains, lighting another joint as he does. Specifically, he’s referencing the long, sweeping tracking shots that are so often attributed to the likes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

“The tone of the show is kind of like manic and panicked,” he explains. “We just liked this idea that if you never cut, you never get a break. And if you’re never editing between shots, then there’s never a rhythm that you’re settling into. So, you literally are off-kilter at all times, and you don’t know what’s going to happen; you don’t know what the camera’s going to do or where it’s going to go. That, to us, was the most literal interpretation of our experience being in these rooms with your head on a swivel and seeing people arguing with each other and storming in and out and following them all.”

Prior to The Studio, Rogen and Goldberg’s last foray into directly satirizing “the industry” was This is the End, an apocalyptic comedy that viscerally parodies Rogen and his peers, including Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and Emma Watson. It was as hilarious and meta as The Studio, certainly, but hardly left the audience with a fondness for its stars. The Studio, on the other hand, offers a more refined approach, delivering a love letter to cinema while lampooning Hollywood’s A-listers. And in true Rogen fashion, no one is spared, from Ron Howard to Zoë Kravitz, and of course, the director himself.

I ask Rogen if he sees slivers of himself in his character. “Oh, it’s so much me, honestly,” he says, his patented laugh echoing throughout the Point Grey offices. “I learned a long time ago that the more I make fun of my own things, the funnier it is. Literally today I’m going to go visit the set of a movie that we’re producing, and I was just saying to the producers, ‘I know they don’t want me there. I know it’s going to stress everyone else to have me there.’ […] So, that’s the stuff that I really relate to, this fear that no one wants me around, that no one actually likes me, and that they just want things from me and that my contributions are actually making things worse. But part of the joke is like, the more I put my own actual interests and things I like into it, and the more we have other people make fun of those things, the more it starts to become very personal in a way that we really like.”

He recalls an episode of the show where his character explains to Zac Efron that their film won’t have a wrap party because — as a true advocate of cinema — he’s trying to “put the money on the screen.”

“That’s your ’53 Corvette I drove by on the way in, right?” retorts Efron. “You really are putting it all on screen, huh?”

Some scenes hit closer to home than others. Rogen’s signature laugh emerges again, this time with just the slightest tinge of red on his face, “And like, that’s a thing I’ve done,” he admits. “I’ve pulled up to the sets of small movies we’re producing in a fancy car and been like, ‘Guys, we’ve got to try to cut five pages out of this.’”

But on the spectrum of “out of touch executive,” enjoying vintage cars seems like a pretty tame offence for one of the industry’s most influential figures. In reality, despite climbing the Hollywood ladder, building his own production company, and all but adopting the “suit” moniker he once so vehemently opposed, Rogen has maintained a reputation of being exceptionally grounded. His secret? Stay in the real world.“I have a great relationship with Lauren, my wife, and we’re very stable,” he explains. “I think that’s really helpful. And I don’t leave the house that much. I do pretty normal things — I go to the grocery store myself, I go to the tailor myself. I think I try to participate in life in a relatively normal way. I haven’t insulated myself completely from the world around me. That, I think, is a trap that a lot of famous and rich people can fall into, which I think is heavily damaging.” A week after our interview, Rogen and his wife, Lauren, arrived at an Oscars afterparty. The next day, he posted a photo from the carpet, captioned, “We went out! And then came home at 11PM and ate ice cream on our couch.”

And then, of course, there’s Goldberg (who is seldom the subject of red-carpet coverage, presumably, by design). “Having a [creative] partner that I trust so much and that I’ve known for so long — and we really grew up together [and] formed our sensibilities together — is unbelievably helpful,” Rogen says. “It’s something that has grounded both of us, I would imagine, over the years and has stopped me from completely losing my mind on many occasions. Having someone there to be a good system of checks and balances is very helpful. You see in the show that, for Matt […] they seem like his friends, but they also work for him. And that’s also a dynamic that I’ve had many times with people where we’re friends, but also, I could fire you.”

Plus, he adds, “I don’t participate in high-stakes poker games or anything.” That doesn’t mean he’s disinterested in growth. After all, he’s in the business of big ideas; you don’t produce a show as stunning and high-profile as The Studio if you hope for it to merely be an indie darling. But for Rogen — even as the owner of Houseplant, a thriving lifestyle and homeware brand, and a burgeoning movie studio in Point Grey — the notion of “brand building” is something he finds deeply boring. He recalls Kevin Hart convincing him to join Twitter (now X) more than a decade ago (a platform on which he’s no longer active) — soon after, he realized he didn’t have the stomach for relentless self-promotion.

“That stuff has never been my instinct,” he laughs. “I’m not the type of person that is seeking expansion. I’m more seeking the idea of ‘Have I done this effectively? Have I made the thing that I wanted to make?’ And for me, I’ve made those things and had a lot of people latch on to them. And I’ve made those things and not had a lot of people latch on to them. But my satisfaction comes from if I can look at it and feel as though it represents what I was hoping it would.”

He puts out the joint. It’s nearly time for him to crash the set of the film he’s producing. Perhaps like Matt, there’s a pang of worry that he might not be entirely welcome. “I got into this because I love movies and now it’s my job to ruin them,” his character laments, hearkening back to Rogen’s meeting with the film exec decades ago. He’s carried that sentiment around with him, like a small token in his pocket reminding him what not to do. Nevertheless, sitting down the hall from his childhood best friend, executing yet another big idea, ruthlessly satirizing their own success, it’s clear we’re watching the same Rogen we’ve always known. He’s merely gotten better behind the camera, has a few nicer cars in the driveway, and gets home a bit earlier.

The post Seth Rogen on His New Series, “The Studio” & Writing From Life appeared first on Sharp Magazine.