With ‘The Studio,' Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg Grow Up. Sort of.

New York Times

26-03-2025

Amoeba Records, on Hollywood Boulevard, isn't the best place for someone of Seth Rogen's visibility to shop hassle-free. Located just blocks from the Chinese Theater, right by Dr. Phil's and Dr. Oz's stars on the Walk of Fame, there may be few places worse.
But when Rogen wasn't being interrupted by his admiring bro-fans, who were legion — one wore toe shoes and a Lil Dicky shirt; another cried — Amoeba was, however, a perfect place to dig through hundreds of vinyl soundtracks. It was the Tuesday before the Oscars, and we were there with Rogen's longtime creative partner, Evan Goldberg, to browse records and talk about their latest creation: 'The Studio,' an ambitious, celebrity-stuffed industry satire for Apple TV+ that premiered on Wednesday.
Rogen had been tasked by his wife to stock more jazz — appropriate given the new show's jazzy score and improvisational feel, shot mostly in long single takes. But as Goldberg and Rogen, who have been friends since they were teenagers, noted, their taste in music had really been formed by their love for movies.
So we found ourselves first among the soundtracks, where highlights included a reissue of 'The Three Amigos' — 'One of my favorite movies of all time,' Rogen said — and two copies of the soundtrack for 'Soul Man,' the 1986 comedy about a young white guy who pretends to be Black in order to get a Harvard scholarship. (Different times, as they say.)
'Dude, I was just telling some people at work about this yesterday!' Goldberg said.
'It has a good soundtrack,' Rogen ventured.
Then, as if speaking with one mind, simultaneously:
'Is it racist to buy it?'
'Is it racist to own this?'
It was, in retrospect, a layered moment: In their hands, Goldberg and Rogen, who for decades have tested the boundaries of mainstream comedy, held a veritable object lesson on what not to do.
By comparison, these two men and their early brand of sweet-but-raunchy stoner comedy had managed to evolve and survive the vicissitudes of time, taste and social attitude, even as not every joke — nor every career among their cohort — survived with them.
In many ways, 'The Studio,' in which Rogen plays the beleaguered head of a fictional major studio, speaks to their evolution. They are no longer the young Canadian outsiders; they're powerful producers in their 40s with the ability to make and break dreams themselves. You just might not guess that from the shorts and sneakers or their other big joint venture: a high-end cannabis accessories company. (Rogen remains one of Hollywood's most famous weed connoisseurs.)
Staring down at the 'Soul Man' soundtrack, Goldberg took a more determined tone.
'We should get it,' he said. 'How much is it?'
'It's only $4,' Rogen said. 'We've got to get the 'Soul Man' soundtrack.'
Goldberg nodded. 'Just so people ask, 'What is that?'' he said. 'Oh, I'll tell you what that [expletive] is …'
Thus was the allegory of the 'Soul Man' soundtrack completed: Buying it felt a little dumb, a little risky, but also hilarious. They snatched it up with glee.
GOLDBERG HAS IT GOOD. He gets to avoid a lot of the public-facing obligations that come with being Rogen. He openly cherishes the freedom. Rogen recently did a podcast interview in which the host said, ''I would be jealous if I was Evan.'' When Rogen relayed this at the record store, Goldberg said: 'Then you need therapy, my friend.'
The many (many) celebrities in 'The Studio,' most playing versions of themselves, have so far helped insulate him from much of the buzz surrounding this latest endeavor, too, even as he and Rogen created the series and directed all 10 episodes. (Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez are also creators.) The premiere alone includes Steve Buscemi, Bryan Cranston, Paul Dano, Martin Scorsese and Charlize Theron. The main cast includes Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, Catherine O'Hara and Chase Sui Wonders.
'There's so many famous actors in it that nobody wants to talk to me, and it's the best,' Goldberg said. 'I'm, like, the ninth person people want to talk to' — a luxury given that his and Rogen's fingerprints have been among the most visible on American film comedy for almost 20 years.
Relatively speaking, it wasn't that long ago that Rogen and Goldberg were high schoolers in Vancouver, British Columbia, already hard at work on the script based on their lives that would become 'Superbad.'
Their careers took off fast. At 16, Rogen was cast in an open audition for the critically beloved NBC comedy 'Freaks and Geeks.' The show was canceled after one season, but Judd Apatow, an executive producer, took a liking to Rogen and helped get him writing, producing and acting gigs while Goldberg stayed in Canada for college.
Soon Goldberg joined Rogen in Los Angeles, where they landed writing jobs on Sacha Baron Cohen's 'Da Ali G Show.'
Apatow liked Goldberg, too. 'Always very kind and sweet,' as Apatow described him later by phone — 'you know, shocked by what Hollywood was.' Under Apatow's wing, the two friends took writing and producing jobs as Rogen honed his acting. At the same time, Apatow was helping them develop 'Superbad.'
'They spent years trying to figure out how to improve the script while looking for somebody to make the script,' Apatow said. 'They were relentless.'
Then everything seemed to happen at once. 'Knocked Up,' starring Rogen (with Katherine Heigl) and executive produced by him and Goldberg, debuted in June 2007 and grossed over $200 million. 'Superbad' followed in August and grossed nearly as much. As important, the young Canadians had been able to make 'Superbad' 'exactly as they wanted to make it,' Apatow noted — no small feat for 20-somethings at a studio. 'It is 100 percent what they envisioned.'
In person, Goldberg and Rogen are an entertaining pair — 'different, but not opposites,' as David Gordon Green, who directed their film 'Pineapple Express,' described them later by phone. Physically, Goldberg is balder and leaner; Rogen is hirsute and softer. Goldberg was more reserved, Rogen more boisterous. They seemed many times to share a brain, though, constantly riffing and often landing on the same punchlines.
This harmony is one reason journalists rarely want to write about their partnership, they said. 'The problem is we don't hate each other,' Goldberg said. (Rogen: 'Exactly.') 'We don't have any beef, so it fundamentally is a little boring.' (Rogen: 'Fundamentally uninteresting.')
Collaborators confirm that they do present an uncommonly harmonious front on set. There is little arguing, no good-cop-bad-cop.
'They have a sort of telekinesis, I think, and they trust each other,' said Wonders, who plays a cutthroat junior executive in 'The Studio.' Barinholtz, who plays the studio's No. 2, put it this way: 'They really make each other laugh, which is really important.' He added, 'That just makes us around them more excited.'
Green, who himself regularly collaborates with longtime friends (including Danny McBride, who was in 'Pineapple Express'), recognized in Goldberg and Rogen the qualities needed to sustain a decades-long creative partnership. He described situations in which he and Rogen would be trying to crack a scene, and Goldberg would simply walk up quietly with a Post-it note, hand it to them and walk away.
'They know when to challenge each other, push each other,' Green said. 'And when to back off and when to support each other.'
Outside Amoeba, as we toted our new LPs to our cars, we passed a ragged group of boomers sitting on the sidewalk. At first glance, they seemed homeless; it turned out they were lining up early for a Rick Springfield concert. They clocked Rogen immediately.
One of the men flagged down Rogen for a selfie. Then he chased down Rogen for a better selfie. Rogen was as gracious as a person could be for someone who had already done this about 10 times that morning.
Goldberg withdrew to a quiet remove, in what seems to be his default position at such times: pleasantly detached, mildly amused and visibly relieved to be the mostly invisible partner.
UNSURPRISINGLY, 'THE STUDIO' is as much a love letter as satire. Since Goldberg and Rogen were in their mid-20s, they have worked mostly inside the studio system, which, for all the jibes it weathers in the show, has been very kind to them.
A running gag in 'The Studio' has Rogen's character, Matt, a devoted cinephile, struggling to make a Kool-Aid Man movie without completely losing his soul. (How many of Matt's fears reflect Rogen's own? 'I'd say all of them,' Rogen said.) But Goldberg and Rogen insist they aren't so much skewering the industry as writing what they know.
'The truth is, they probably would make a Kool-Aid movie,' Rogen said later that week at the headquarters of their production company, Point Grey Pictures. Inside sat a framed still from a 'Simpsons' episode Goldberg and Rogen wrote ('Homer the Whopper'). The restrooms were labeled 'washrooms.' The conference room smelled like weed.
'We thank God we're in a position where we don't have to make the Kool-Aid movie,' Rogen added. 'But the funny thing about studio executives is they do. And that is something that just became entertaining to us.'
Hunger for the types of comedies Goldberg and Rogen made in their youth has fluctuated over time; they have thrived by adapting. Exhibit A is Point Grey. The company's portfolio is diverse, claiming dozens of successful movies and TV shows, not all of them straightforward comedies. Many embrace other genres, like the Amazon anti-superhero series 'The Boys,' the Hulu docudrama 'Pam & Tommy' and the Peacock true-crime docuseries 'Paul T. Goldman.' In 2023, they made 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,' their most significant foray into a pre-existing franchise.
'Fifteen years ago, we would've made an R-rated high school movie,' Rogen said. 'And now the version of the high school movie that we are able to make for theaters currently, that is popular and people like, is 'Ninja Turtles.''
Such large-scale productions help them continue to produce indies, they said, though both were quick to note that they love the big stuff, too. They aren't snobs: They like comics; they like explosions. As James Weaver, the president of Point Grey, noted, even a movie as over-the-top as 'This Is the End' can be deeply personal.
'Even though it is an apocalypse movie where a demon with a giant penis comes in in the third act,' he said, the movie is 'at its inception about old friends and new friends.'
'The Studio' reinforces this point repeatedly, though with pointed self-awareness. 'All movies are art,' Matt tells a group of judgmental doctors in one episode. 'You don't get to pick which movies are art.'
The scene serves as a kind of thesis to the show and to Goldberg and Rogen's career — particularly given that Matt is scrambling to finish the trailer for a satirical zombie movie … in which the zombie-making infection is spread by diarrhea.
'We've decided to participate in it rather than lament it too much,' Rogen said of the big shifts that have left many in Hollywood scrambling. 'To us it's not a drag. It's just like: The industry changes and evolves, and you must change and evolve.'