Seth Rogen Was Worried He Couldn’t ‘Come Back’ from Controversy Around The Interview

Seth Rogen’s career has taken some twists and turns.

Rogen, 43, took part in The Hollywood Reporter’s comedy actor roundtable, published June 11. In it, he was asked about the time after Freaks and Geeks ended in 2000 when he was struggling to find work while his costar Jason Segel (also a roundtable participant) had lots of offers. Asked what changed, Rogen said, “Luck, honestly.”

“But I was also just a young person who expected the world to bend to their will. So, there were a few years of unemployment, but looking back, it really wasn’t that bad,” he reflected. He noted that director Judd Apatow would give him and his writing partner Evan Goldberg jobs, asking them for help to rewrite movies.

“And we were writing Pineapple Express and finishing Superbad throughout that time, but it was aggravating because I kept seeing movies get made that had so much less care and thought put into them than the ones we were working on,” he said. “And this was a time of particularly bad high school movies and weed-related movies, which is what we really were trying to do. So, it was frustrating, but at the same time, I got to rewrite Bad Boys II, which was pretty exciting.”

But Rogen said in no way was that the time he was most worried about his career, which took off with movies like Knocked Up and Superbad (both 2007), 2008’s Pineapple Express and 2009’s Funny People. 

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“I’d say after The Interview came out was a much harder time in my career because I legitimately thought I had eliminated myself as someone who was viable to work with,” he said. He and Goldberg, 42, directed the 2014 film together and Rogen starred in it with James Franco. They played two journalists who set up an interview with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, only for the CIA to recruit them to assassinate him. North Korea threatened action against the United States over the film, and the hack of Sony later that year was allegedly connected to it as well.

“I was very worried that no comedy we made again would seem funny because it had been taken to this extremely serious place. I felt like maybe I’d pushed things further than you can come back from,” he said.

At the same time, that experience was what led to The Studio, his new Apple TV+ series. “We got exposed to the real higher-level echelon of studio inner workings. We were in meetings with the CEOs all of a sudden, so we saw a raw version of the thought that goes into the decision-making at the highest level of the studios,” he said. “I’d never been around people who run multibillion-dollar companies before that.”

But Rogen realized his anxiety about his career wasn’t necessary when he was on the set of 2015’s Steve Jobs. “I was talking to [costar] Kate Winslet about the stuff because it was still petering out, and she was like, ‘Oh yeah, wasn’t there something with you and some movie?’ ” he said. “I was just like, ‘Oh yeah, no one remembers anything.’ In a good way, everyone’s focused on their own s—. And this huge thing, because it didn’t happen to them, two months later they’ve completely forgotten about it.”

Speaking to PEOPLE in March about The Studio and its spotlight on the less pleasant parts of Hollywood, Rogen said, “It really is just our perspective of all of it. I think we are constantly frustrated by Hollywood and disappointed in Hollywood, and aggravated by it, but at the same time, we see the magic.” Rogen co-created the series with Goldberg.

“We are believers in the magic of the movies and we know nothing else,” he said. “And so for us, there is amazing potential in Hollywood, we just hope that it is used properly. But we love movies and the show itself was an opportunity to kind of bring that to life cinematically while telling these stories.”