Seth Rogen on the two cameos he was 'shocked' to get for The Studio — and where season 2 will pic...

The actor and cocreator of the Emmynominated series tells EW why he wanted to star in the comedy, filming that Ron Howard showdown, and more. Seth Rogen on the

The actor and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated series tells EW why he wanted to star in the comedy, filming that Ron Howard showdown, and more.

Seth Rogen on the two cameos he was 'shocked' to get for The Studio — and where season 2 will pick up

The actor and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated series tells EW why he wanted to star in the comedy, filming that Ron Howard showdown, and more.

By Gerrad Hall

Gerrad Hall is an editorial director at **, overseeing movie, awards, and music coverage. He is also host of the the *Awardist* podcast, and cohosts EW's live Oscars, Emmys, SAG, and Grammys red carpet shows. He has appeared on *Good Morning America*, *The Talk*, *Access Hollywood*, *Extra!*, and other talk shows, delivering the latest news on pop culture and entertainment.

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Published on August 14, 2025 12:52PM EDT

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Seth Rogen on 'The Studio'. Credit:

Seth Rogen admits he was in a daze — and not for Pineapple Express types of reasons.

The star and co-creator of the Hollywood satire *The Studio* says he didn't know how to process the 23 Emmy nominations the Apple TV+ series received in July for its much-talked-about first season.

"It's not something I'm used to at all," he says on *The Awardist* podcast, followed by his signature — and infectious — raspy chuckle. "It's new for me, and it's not something I ever expect because it's not something that ever happens."

Perhaps even more unbelievable: His *The Fabelmans* director Steven Spielberg sent him a congratulatory text the morning of nominations.

"It's things like that, that are completely mind-blowing to me," he says. "And as someone who grew up loving movies and still is amazed I get to work in this field, it is not lost on me how crazy that is and how cool it is. It blows my mind every time."

Seth Rogen on 'The Studio'.

He might want to get used to it — and perhaps even to winning, as the show stands a strong chance of winning several of its categories when the Emmys are handed out Sept. 14. Rogen stars as the newly-installed head of a failing movie studio. In his new role, he struggles to balance his desire to create great art with the business' bottom line and producing consumer-friendly titles.

And because this is a comedy, he's surrounded by a team — the studio's VP of production (Ike Barinholtz), head of marketing (Kathryn Hahn), assistant (Chase Sui Wonders), and former studio head/mentor (Catherine O'Hara) — who mean well but can't help find themselves mixed up in ridiculous shenanigans and frequently trying to put out fires.

As ridiculous as the storylines are, though, they're all rooted in real-life experiences had by Rogen, his co-creator/producing partner Evan Goldberg, and others he knows. That includes working with directors who don't want notes about their projects (Ron Howard playing himself), dealing with actors and their needs (Anthony Mackie, Dave Franco, and Zoë Kravitz, also as themselves), and the studio's CEO (Bryan Cranston, not as himself).

***Check out more from EW's *The Awardist*, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV, movies, and more.***

Below, check out highlights from Rogen's interview on *The Awardist* podcast, and check out the full episode here:

Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn, Seth Rogen, and Chase Sui Wonders on 'The Studio'.

On getting permission to mentioned, even skewer, other studios and company brands

**SETH ROGEN:** If anything, I'm amazed at what we *are* allowed to do. We're constantly writing things and being like, oh, they'll tell us we can't do this, or we have to change it, or we have to get legal clearance on this. And it's completely random. After all these years, I'm still to this day shocked and confused by what gets flagged and what doesn't get flagged. We didn't have to clear Kool-Aid — we were allowed to use Kool-Aid.

**THE AWARDIST: I would've thought that would've been the number one thing.**

Me too! I would've as well. What's actually nice is — and this is something I've learned over the years as well — is you can kind of almost say anything in a narrative. It's fiction. We're not saying it's real, you know what I mean? And so you can sort of make a joke about anything. And that is something we always bring up in meetings with lawyers.

Seth Rogen recalls being on 'Dawson's Creek' in a 'quid pro quo' with 'Freaks and Geeks' costar Busy Philipps

Seth Rogen did not inform Josh Duhamel his name would be a punchline on 'The Studio'

The show's many guest stars, including more at the Golden Globes

We didn't want 'em to be window dressing. We were hard on ourselves with: If we're asking these people to do this, then they really need to feel like an integral part of the narrative, of the episode and serve a very specific comedic purpose. Scorsese, I was completely shocked by — that was very early on in the process, which was great and I think actually helped us get a lot more people to sign on throughout the filming of the show 'cause we were able to be like, "Martin Scorsese is in the first episode!" That was, I think, very alluring. And [Netflix co-CEO] Ted Sarandos, I was honestly completely shocked. It's so funny that he did that. It felt like a real long shot when I reached out to him, but he did it.

Ike Barinholtz, Seth Rogen, and Martin Scorsese on 'The Studio'.

Why he wanted to star in the series

I've been making a lot of stuff lately that I love but is not incredibly comedic, honestly, nor is it trying to be. I was shooting *The Fabelmans* when we thought of the idea. I had just done *Pam and Tommy* — it's all work I am so proud of and think is so good, but it's not like the funniest stuff in the world. So I was really thinking, *I want to do something funny. I want to be funny. I wanna perform funny scenes. I want to work with funny people. And I want to get back into that sort of energy.* I was very curious as to like — now I'm a man in my mid-forties, what is a type of comedy that I could do now at this age that feels kind of new and challenging and reflective of where I currently am in my life?

The inspiration for that Ron Howard A Beautiful Mind rant

I remember being at one of the first test screenings for *Borat*, I think, and giving a note that no one liked. And then Larry David was in the back row and made fun of me.

Filming Howard and Rogen's conference room showdown

**ROGEN:** We did it a lot of times, maybe 14 or 15 times or something. It was one of the hardest [scenes]. It's the longest scene that takes place in one room in the entire show. And so that made it incredibly challenging from a blocking and camera and performance standpoint. It's pretty much one giant, long, uninterrupted take. And because we don't want it to be boring, we want it to have movement. And the timing is so specific...Our camera operator, Mark, who's amazing and shot essentially every scene of the entire show with the camera on his shoulder, he was the most nervous that day out of any day 'cause he was like, it's very much literally on me to kind of support the cast and nail it every single time. And he's remembering like 150 things; he's remembering where to go, where to point the camera — it's essentially like recreating an entire edited scene in his head.

**He had to have the script to memorized, too.**

Oh, yes. And not just the script, but the timing of every cut. We'd [talk] in between every scene, every take and give editorial notes to him like, "You need to hold on my reaction for a split second longer and then pan to the other person for their reaction a little bit faster, then hold on them for a little bit longer and then go off of them." And he would just be like, "Okay!" [We'd] be like, "Is he processing this?" And then you'd watch the next take. And he would, he would do it. It was truly remarkable.

Seth Rogen and Ron Howard on 'The Studio'.

Where season 2 will pick up the action

Our show is so rooted in our perspective of the Hollywood that we currently live in. We started writing the show before the strike, and then the strike happened and we took a huge amount of time off and went back to it. But during the strike, Hollywood changed in a lot of ways. And also, movies like *Barbie* came out and stuff like that happened [that] actually kind of changed the landscape of Hollywood. So I think for us, it's important to be able to reference things like *Sinners* and *Minecraft *and *Superman* and James Gunn and studio heads who are also writers and directors. It's important to us to really be able to acknowledge what we view as the current situation in Hollywood. And to that end, a time cut seems like a good idea, just so we're not stuck two years ago, basically.

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