Seth Rogen’s ‘Interview’: Inside the Film North Korea Really Doesn’t Want You to See
It’s not every day you get to sit down with the guys who might be responsible for starting World War III. And it’s definitely not every day that they’re getting baked when you do.
“Hell-o!” booms Seth Rogen on a June afternoon as the door to his L.A. office swings open, revealing him and comedy partner/hetero lifemate Evan Goldberg preparing to take a mighty hit from a bong. The pair co-wrote and directed the new movie The Interview, in which a pair of bumbling entertainment journalists played by James Franco (a Ryan Seacrest-ish celebrity talk-show host) and Rogen (his faithful, somewhat put-upon producer) land an interview with Kim Jong-un and are enlisted by the CIA to assassinate him. It’s a movie no one expected to be well-received in North Korea, where even taking a picture of a statue of the Supreme Leader could land you in a prison camp. But the trailer came out earlier that week, and it turns out North Korea is way more pissed than anyone saw coming.
A spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry has declared the movie “a most wanton act of terrorism and war.” The “gangster filmmaker” has incited “a gust of hatred and rage” among the North Korean people, and if the U.S. government allows the film to proceed, “merciless countermeasures” will be taken. The threats made headlines from Al Jazeera to the BBC; coincidentally or not, a few days later the real Kim Jong-un launched a few ballistic test missiles. “Our stuff is in the news sometimes,” says a slightly dazed Goldberg, a rumpled 32-year-old in shorts and New Balances. “But this is different – this is real news.”
Upon hearing all this, you may be struck by two simultaneous thoughts. The first is: classic North Korea. And the second is: Seth Rogen? That lovable man-child who makes dopey movies with his friends? The one who’s probably too stoned to play a video game about a nuclear war, much less incite a real one? What’s a nice guy like him doing in a diplomatic crisis like this?
“It’s funny, because we’ve been in the world of North Korea for so long that when we heard it, we were like, ‘Yeah, OK,’ ” Rogen, 32, says. “They say crazy shit about America all the time. Literally, the opening scene of our movie is a little girl singing pretty much the exact thing they said about us.”
“At best, it will cause a country to be free, and at worst, it will cause a nuclear war. Big margin with this movie.” — Seth Rogen
“We have a file in the building somewhere of all the insane shit they say,” adds Goldberg. “They called Obama, like, ‘an evil monkey’ – you have to look up the exact wording, because whatever I say won’t be as crazy as what it actually was.” (It was actually “wicked black monkey.”)
Rogen admits that they did get called in for a meeting with Sony’s North American CEO (“Any time a movie causes a country to threaten nuclear retaliation, the higher-ups wanna get in a room with you”), but otherwise he’s taking the bluster in stride. He says he might stay away from South Korea for a while, just in case (although Franco is attending an event at a Gucci store in Hong Kong, which is supposedly safe). “And in terms of getting the word out about the movie, it’s not bad,” Rogen points out. “If they actually make good on it, it would be bad for the world – but luckily that doesn’t seem like their style.
“Although it did worry my mother,” he says. “For a Jewish mother, having a country wage war on your son is the worst. No Jewish mother should have to deal with that.” He pulls out his phone and reads the texts she sent him yesterday.
Rogen: Did you hear the news today? An act of war?
Seth: Don’t worry. It’s crazy rhetoric.
Rogen: But how can we be sure?!
Rogen laughs. “If Kim Jong-un only knew what he was doing to my mother! He would know he had exacted his revenge.”
The offices of Rogen and Goldberg’s production company – a Spanish-style bungalow near the back of Sony Pictures Studios, right next door to Adam Sandler’s – used to be Louis B. Mayer’s private dining room, back when the lot belonged to MGM. Later on, it was a classroom for MGM’s child stars like Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor. (“This is where the kids all got hooked on drugs,” Rogen jokes.) Now, there’s a big whiteboard with a note about a “jerk-off challenge,” and an exercise ball that doesn’t seem to get much use. A dozen multicolored index cards are thumbtacked to a bulletin board – the outline for their next movie – and the sounds of NBA Jam fill the air.
Rogen is dressed in his typical work uniform of a worn T-shirt and flip-flops, accessorized with several days of scruff. In person, he’s trimmer and more kempt than you’re conditioned to expect, but with the same doofily expressive face and bowling-league physique that plays so well onscreen. (His friend and mentor Judd Apatow says Rogen is built for comedy the way LeBron is for basketball.) He laughs constantly, that trademark Beavis-meets-Butt-Head cough, like a motorcycle engine that won’t turn over. (Goldberg says he would have made a great voice for a Muppet.) On his desk is a hot-pink prescription bottle filled with some of Southern California’s finest medicinal cannabis, which he absent-mindedly rolls into a tight joint.
Rogen and Goldberg are on their way to a theater across the lot, where they’re going over some special effects for the movie. The Interview features hundreds of visual effects – even more than their apocalyptic comedy This Is the End, which literally showed the Hollywood Hills being Raptured. “My respect for Michael Bay quintupled when we started doing this shit,” says Goldberg, splitting the joint with Rogen as they walk. They arrive in a theater with leather armchairs and small bowls of pita and hummus, and each grabs a small laser-pointer and takes a seat.