“We’re not jaded to the point that we don’t appreciate the golf carts,” Seth Rogen says when I tell him I rode one over to our meeting.
“No,” says Evan Goldberg. “We raced them the other night.”
Let that reassure anyone who suspects these lifelong creative partners, now in their early forties, have shed their boyish enthusiasm. The cart-racing is a perk of the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, California, where the pair are huddled up in their office, having commenced a 14-hour shooting day that will grind on until 3 a.m. They’ll be sustained throughout by “many, many” espressos, Rogen says. “The reason we pivoted to espresso is we can’t have 10 cups of coffee,” Goldberg adds.
Hopped up on caffeine, they speak fluidly, chasing one another’s thoughts as you might expect of dudes who have been riffing since they met at a bar mitzvah class in Vancouver at age 12. Goldberg and Rogen sit with their sneakers kicked up on a couch armrest and coffee table, respectively, but despite their relaxed postures, this office betrays no sign of the stoner daze that gave us Superbad (a screenplay they started writing as kids) and Pineapple Express. Instead, it’s clean and organized: scripts and schedules arranged squarely on a table, cast headshots of Bryan Cranston and Kathryn Hahn pinned to the wall overhead.
It’s no wonder they can’t slack off, given what they’re juggling. In a few weeks, Prime will release Sausage Party: Foodtopia (now streaming), a miniseries follow-up to their raunchy 2016 animated film starring sentient grocery products. Did they always know they’d revisit that world? “It’s a matter of perception,” Goldberg jokes. “We never left.” Rogen says the show, which sees our favorite foods try to create their own society instead of being eaten, was born out of a maniacal desire to “keep this train rolling” — they also dream of turning the Sausage Party concept into a full-fledged Broadway musical. Meanwhile, they’re producing two hit superhero series for the streamer — the animated Invincible and the gruesome and satirical The Boys (along with its spinoffs) — and have a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem on the slate for 2026. On top of that, they’re developing a streaming show that bridges the storylines of the film franchise.
Then there’s The Studio, the Apple TV+ comedy series Rogen and Goldberg are filming today. Focused on a legacy Hollywood movie studio fighting for survival in an increasingly commercialized industry, it will feature many actors as “themselves,” but its raison d’être is to explore the lives of the regular people toiling away behind the scenes. Other producers include alums of the acid political satire Veep, which took a similar approach to Washington politics.
“We’re not trying to create some idyllic, shiny version of Hollywood,” Goldberg says. “We’re just trying to show the version we’ve lived, which is faulty, hilarious people trying to do good, [and] people not giving a flying fuck about doing good.” Rogen says influences on the project include Robert Altman’s 1992 film The Player and the sitcom The Larry Sanders Show, both hyper-meta critiques of America’s entertainment mecca. “Exploring it from the studio side of things is probably a much more relatable way into Hollywood for most people, because they are essentially just people who work in an office,” he says. “A big part of the show is our own discomfort as people who are creative caught in a world that is decidedly becoming more and more corporate.”
Those tensions boiled over with last year’s labor disputes, resulting in lengthy strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA. The guys had plenty to do at that time — tending to their luxe cannabis lifestyle brand Houseplant and producing the CBC’s The Great Canadian Pottery Throw Down (an offshoot of the British series), in which Rogen, an accomplished potter himself, appeared as a guest judge. “It was a true merging of my passions,” says Rogen, who calls himself a huge fan of reality TV and enjoyed figuring out a format he and Goldberg had never tried before. “It’s rare you just have no idea what’s going to happen when you’re filming a television show,” he says. “You’re just like, ‘Everyone’s thing could explode!’”
Once the unions reached deals with the studios to conclude their work stoppage last fall, it was crunch time. “A lot of emotions leading out of that strike,” Goldberg says. “It finally ends and it’s exhilarating, and then is completely stressful.” At Point Grey Pictures, their production company, shows and movies were shelved because of shifted timelines and the need to “hit the ground running” with whatever was ready to go, Goldberg explains. Shortly after, the two confessed to each other that they were both experiencing what Rogen describes as “crushing anxiety.”
That they can rely on one another in moments of vulnerability and crisis is a testament to a collaborative bromance that Goldberg says is “set in stone.” Rogen says their “creative brains have formed together.” They recall a Howard Stern interview during which the radio host refused to believe that they don’t really fight. “We’re not resentful or jealous of each other,” Rogen says. When I remark that they’ve avoided the need for couples counseling, Rogen says, “That would be a good show.” I point out that it’s on the record as my pitch, though he’s quick to remind me of the corporate machinations he and Golberg are lampooning with The Studio: “Anything that happens on the Warner Bros. lot is property of David Zaslav,” Rogen says with his hearty chuckle, referring to the CEO who has made some unpopular cost-cutting measures since WarnerMedia and Discovery, Inc. merged in 2022.
Still, these guys are hardly cynics. While changing trends create new challenges, they’re excited by the public’s growing appetite for adventurous animation and the filmmaking prowess of a younger generation that came up on TikTok. And their own lasting bond is cause for celebration. “We have to plan a 30th-anniversary party,” Goldberg says, to commemorate the three decades he and Rogen have been joined at the hip. “We should do, like, a wedding. We should go to Sonoma [California]. Make our wives be our ring bearers.” Rogen agrees: “We should put way more effort into this than we do our actual marriages.”
As I thank them for chatting and start to head out, I overhear Goldberg ask Rogen how long they have until their scheduled call time. “We’ve got 10 minutes, man!” Rogen exclaims. “Ten minutes to do whatever the fuck we want!” Goldberg declares. Start up the golf carts.
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