With The Studio, Canadian comedy duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg grow up – sort of (2025)

LOS ANGELES – Amoeba Records in Hollywood Boulevard is not the best place for someone of Seth Rogen’s visibility to shop hassle-free. Located just blocks from TCL Chinese Theatre, right by Dr Phil’s and Dr Oz’s stars on the Walk of Fame, there may be few places worse.

But when the actor and film-maker was not being interrupted by his admiring bro-fans, Amoeba was, however, a perfect place to dig through hundreds of vinyl soundtracks.

It was the Tuesday before the Oscars in early March, and The New York Times was there with Rogen’s long-time creative partner, writer-director-producer 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 March 26.

Rogen had been tasked by his wife, American actress-screenwriter Lauren Miller, to stock more jazz – appropriate, given the show’s jazzy score and improvisational feel, shot mostly in long single takes.

But, as Goldberg and Rogen – who are both 42 and have been friends since they were teenagers – noted, their taste in music had really been formed by their love of movies.

The 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 are powerful producers in their 40s with the ability to make and break dreams themselves.

The many celebrities in The Studio, most playing versions of themselves, have helped insulate Goldberg from much of the buzz surrounding this latest endeavour too, even as he and Rogen created the series and directed all 10 episodes.

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 are 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 was not that long ago that Rogen and Goldberg were high schoolers in Vancouver, British Columbia, hard at work on the script based on their lives that would become Superbad (2007).

Their careers took off fast. At 16, Rogen was cast in an open audition for the critically beloved NBC comedy series Freaks And Geeks (1999 to 2000). The show was cancelled after one season, but American film-maker 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 English actor-comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s Da Ali G Show (2000 to 2004).

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.

Then everything seemed to happen at once. Knocked Up, starring Rogen with American actress Katherine Heigl, and executive-produced by him and Goldberg, was released in June 2007 and grossed more than US$200 million. Superbad soon followed in August and grossed nearly as much.

Just as important was that the young Canadians had been able to make Superbad “exactly as they wanted to make it”, Apatow, 47, noted – no small feat for 20somethings at a studio. “It is 100 per cent what they envisioned.”

And the harmony between the entertaining pair is one reason journalists rarely want to write about their partnership, they said. “The problem is we don’t hate each other,” Goldberg said. “We don’t have any beef, so fundamentally it is a little boring.”

Unsurprisingly, The Studio is as much a love letter as it is satire. Since their mid-20s, Goldberg and Rogen 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. But Goldberg and Rogen insist they are not so much skewering the industry as writing what they know.

“The truth is, they probably would make a Kool-Aid movie,” Rogen said later at the headquarters of their production company, Point Grey Pictures.

“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, and 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 (2019 to present), the Hulu docudrama Pam & Tommy (2022) and the Peacock true-crime docuseries Paul T. Goldman (2023).

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 theatres 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 are not snobs, and they like comics and explosions.

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 careers – particularly given that Matt is scrambling to finish the trailer for a satirical zombie movie, in which the zombie-making infection is spread by diarrhoea.

“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.” NYTIMES

• The Studio is available on Apple TV+.

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