The movie Seth Rogen was convinced would ruin his career: “I was very worried”
These days, Seth Rogen is enjoying life as a respected player at the very top of the Hollywood game, currently getting some of the best reviews of his life for acting, directing, and creating the TV show The Studio.
He produced the very successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and is set to continue this trend as the developer of a rebooted Darkwing Duck and Tailspin for Disney; however, things haven’t always run so smoothly for the funnyman.
Like anyone who’s been in the movie business for as long as Rogen, he’s endured a few bumps in the road, with the dark humour prevalent in a lot of his work often coming under fire for criticism, such as reducing the Israel-Palestine conflict to a disagreement between two types of bread in Sausage Party.
There’s his relationship with James Franco, which saw him forced to clarify his position when accusations of sexual misconduct were levelled against his long-time collaborator and friend, and of course, going back more than ten years is the project that almost upended his entire career, if the man himself is to be believed.
In a round table discussion with fellow comedians for The Hollywood Reporter, Rogen spoke about what he considered to be the most difficult period of his professional life.
“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, “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.”
For those who don’t remember, The Interview is a 2014 comedy that had some serious real-world ramifications, which saw Rogen, who also co-directed the film alongside Evan Goldberg, play a TV producer who is given the opportunity of a lifetime to interview the revered North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un. When he agrees to interview Randall Park’s Kim, he and his presenter, played by Franco, find themselves embroiled in a CIA ploy to assassinate the notorious dictator.
As you can imagine, this plot point certainly didn’t help the real-life relationship between the US and its Eastern enemy, and The Interview became headline news after Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked by a group with links to the North Korean government. His father might have been a big fan of movies, but Kim Jong Un was less-than-thrilled about this one, with threats levelled against any cinema bold enough to screen the movie, which led to multiple chains refusing to show it.
Although it did receive a very limited theatrical run, the film was mostly consigned to the internet, and thankfully, there was no violence in the aftermath of The Interview, with it nowadays remembered as an interesting historical moment, a reminder of the very real consequences cinema can have on the world, from which Rogen was able to bounce back relatively quickly. However, it’s important to keep in sight that in another timeline, The Interview might have caused not just the end of his career, but a series of other, much scarier knock-on effects.
