‘Freaks and Geeks’ star Shaun Weiss stole from the show’s producer Judd Apatow
Freaks and Geeks actor Shaun Weiss has confessed he once took a laptop belonging to Judd Apatow to a pawn shop to get money for drugs. Weiss, who played Sean in the NBC show created by Paul Feig, came under co-producer Apatow’s wing after leaving rehab, where he was treated for his substance abuse.
Weiss discussed the event on the Dopey podcast, where he also revealed the laptop he pawned was the same one Apatow wrote the script for The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “Judd Apatow put me in a rehab place. He was giving me a chance. That was the other thing that was really heartbreaking, too,” Weiss said. “He was really being my mentor and teaching me how to write and giving me different jobs and assignments that really cultivated me as a writer. He got me a job writing jokes for the Oscars; he just gave me all these gigs, grooming me for better things.”
The actor described the laptop: “It was a PowerBook, but like, decked the fuck out. It was probably like a $5,000 laptop at the time. One you can’t even really buy.”
However, Weiss revealed the director was “incredibly gracious” about the incident once he found out. Although the actor thought he had gone too far with the theft. “That was hard, that loss,” Weiss explained. “Now I was crossing the line; when you take your fucking laptop and pawn that shit, you’re not a writer anymore.”
He concludes: “I never tried to contact him at all since that moment. Do you think he knows that I’m sorry for what I did? I feel like he knows that I’m sorry, and I feel like, what good does it do me too? I feel like that’s a mess that I fucking made.”
Freaks and Geeks is a teen drama show starring Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps, John Francis Daley, Martin Starr, and Samm Levine. The show launched its cast’s star power careers, who continue the show’s legacy through appearances in Apatow’s following work. The show was unfortunately cancelled after one season. However, a dedicated cult following continues to watch it today.
Feig once shared his thoughts on the show’s cancellation: “What I didn’t realise is people didn’t want that, especially back in 1999,” he said. “It made them very uncomfortable. And so that was the rude awakening for me of hearing people go like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t watch that because it was so cringey.’ I’m like, ‘Didn’t you think it was hilarious?’ So that was a bummer.”
Watch Apatow discuss the show here.
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