Success hasn’t spoiled Seth Rogen. In fact, the 24-year-old comic actor is kind of shocked by it.
“It’s just weird, I have no other way to describe it,” says Rogen, the star of the new comedy “Knocked Up,” opening Friday.
“I’ve gone from being that guy whose name nobody ever remembers to being the guy that the movie’s about,” Rogen says of his role in “Knocked Up,” director Judd Apatow’s follow-up to “The 40 Year-Old Virgin,” in which Rogen starred.
Rogen plays Ben Stone, a pot-smoking, video game-playing, technically unemployed L.A. slacker. His natural wit gets him noticed by Alison (“Grey’s Anatomy” star Katherine Heigl), whom he meets in a club. They hook up — and she discovers a few weeks later that she’s pregnant.
“I’m pretty certain that if Judd hadn’t hit with ‘Virgin,’ no studio would have taken the chance on me. Hell, I wouldn’t have taken the chance on me,” Rogen says. “Judd said he thought I would be the right guy for this one, and I had to trust him. If he’s wrong, well, I’m the guy whose face is on the freakin’ poster. But people seem to dig it, so maybe we’re OK.”
Apatow, who cast a 16-year-old Rogen in the short-lived TV series “Freaks and Geeks” and “Undeclared,” says he knew Rogen could carry a film.
Rogen brought plenty of firsthand knowledge of the film’s portrait of young guys living together, particularly since he more or less roomed with all of the actors playing his housemates in the film. Rogen’s first L.A. roommate was his “Freaks and Geeks” and “Knocked Up” co-star Martin Starr. The two shared an apartment when they were 18.
“We smoked a lot of weed; that aspect of the movie rings true,” says Starr, now 24. “I remember I got a pound of the [worst] Mexican weed you could find. It came in a huge Ziploc bag. Seth was so happy to have a pound of weed that he used it as a pillow that night.”
Says Rogen: “When you’re a Canadian moving to L.A., the notion of giant amounts of Mexican weed is a new concept. And we indulged!”
For anyone who finds the movie’s depictions of dude life to be on the fantastic side, Rogen offers up the following anecdote:
“Martin and I lived in a two-floor apartment,” Rogen says. “One time I came downstairs, and it was really hot, like 130 degrees. And I found Martin passed out on the floor — from being drunk, I imagine — and the oven door was open and the oven was on and there were burnt-up tater tots inside. … We could have died. We really could have died!”
With “Virgin” and now “Knocked Up,” Apatow and Rogen have spearheaded a return to R-rated, profane comedy — stocked with more than its fair share of pot-smoking, sex-obsessed slackers who live to amuse each other in ribald camaraderie. “Knocked Up” goes one further by showing an explicit birth scene.
“It’s what the movie’s about,” Rogen says. “I thought, man, we say and show everything else, why should we wimp out on the real deal?”
Rogen and Apatow argue that the success of “Virgin” was dependent not just on its dirty words and sexual frankness but also because “it has heart, you know?” Rogen says.
“In the end, people said, ‘You know, that was actually really sweet,’ ” he says. “And that’s what people have been telling me about ‘Knocked Up’ too. They like all these characters, and they really want them to be happy.”
The balance, he says, required finding a leading lady who “would seem to be way out of Ben’s league, you know, way too pretty and smart, but could see beyond his obvious shortcomings to what he was really like inside.”
The audition process was challenging, according to Rogen.
“Some of the women … you could just sense how uncomfortable they were with the humor and the situations,” he says. “But when Katherine came in, it was instant. She just got it right away, and she may not appreciate me saying this, but it’s like she was one of us already.”
“Us” includes Rogen and Apatow, plus Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, who appeared with Rogen in “The 40 Year-Old Virgin;” Leslie Mann, who plays Alison’s older sister in “Knocked Up” and is married to Apatow; and Jay Baruchel, who headed the cast of “Undeclared.”
“My basic working method is that I like to be around people who are all at least as neurotic as me,” Apatow says. “And of course, who can make me laugh.”
“Uh, I’m not sure that’s really all that hard,” Rogen replies. “We all have the same warped sense of humor. But it’s looking like there’s a lot more other warped people out there too. I think they call them humans.”
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‘FREAKS’ REUNION
For “Knocked Up,” Judd Apatow stockpiled actors from his ’90s cult TV favorite “Freaks and Geeks,” about two bands of early ’80s high school misfits. Seth Rogen, Jason Segel and Martin Starr star in the movie, and James Franco makes a cameo. [ AP ]
