But they’ve tried to evolve with the times, and Rogen
said riding the comedic line between enlightened and
neutered in the Age of Woke isn’t as tricky as you might
think. “I think if you actually care, then it’s easy. We do
not want people to feel bad when they’re watching our
movies. I’ve had people come up to me and be like, ‘That
made me feel like shit when I was in the movie theatre
and everyone was laughing about that.’ Like the ‘How
I know you’re gay’ thing [from The 40-Year-Old Virgin],
it’s something people have been like, ‘It’s not fun to be in
the theatre when people are laughing at that, knowing
what they’re probably actually laughing at.’ And I don’t
want anyone to have that experience watching our
movies.” He laughed and – comedian’s reflex – dashed
off a throwaway zing: “That’s why Todd Phillips makes
movies. Let him have that.”
Departing the Apatow fold after that string of hits
was an organic transition, he says, devoid of drama –
more open relationship than bitter divorce. But wasn’t
it complicated, at least? “It was and it wasn’t,” he said.
Over a decade ago, he explained, there was a project- 50/50 – that they’d approached Apatow to produce.
But because Apatow was working on his film Funny
People, which overlapped thematically, he declined,
so Rogen and Goldberg chose to try their hand at
producing themselves.
It was a revelation. Now they could manage their
work as well as create it. “I’ve grown to appreciate
acting in things that we control. I get uncomfortable
when I’m involved in something but I don’t control
it from the beginning to the end,” he said, citing
exceptions, like working with Danny Boyle on Steve
Jobs. “When I act in someone else’s movie but I’m not
the producer of it, I don’t have a lot of say in how that
movie is marketed or presented to the world, and that
makes me uncomfortable... The idea of acting in movies
we are not producing is a little scary to me at times.”
When I observed that he and Apatow haven’t
worked together since he started his production
company, in 2011, Rogen referred me to Apatow’s
cameo in The Disaster Artist and pointed out that
Leslie Mann, Apatow’s wife, starred in Blockers, the
2018 comedy that Point Grey produced.
When I asked what it was like going from being
Apatow’s protégé to his competition, he gently
corrected me: Not competition. “Peers.”
schism would have been wildly out of
character for Rogen, anyway. His is not
a trail littered with the carcasses of
broken relationships. He and Goldberg- the presumptive “we” in all of his
conversations about work – have “known
each other since we were 12, so we really
developed our personalities together in a lot
of ways.” And over the years, Rogen has repeatedly
collaborated with other allies, including the directors
Nicholas Stoller (the Neighbors movies) and Jonathan
Levine (50/50, Long Shot), as well as his frequent
actor co-conspirators: James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig
Robinson, Danny McBride, Paul Rudd.
His lack of major trauma is something Rogen talks
about a lot with his wife, the other enduring, consistent
relationship in his life. He and Miller-Rogen, a fellow
actor-writer-director, have been together since 2004- their friends were dating, and it was a semi set-up
situation – and married in 2011. Around the time
they started hanging out, Miller-Rogen’s mother was
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and the condition advanced
quickly. It was brutal, and Rogen recognised that he had
never experienced anything like it in his own life. That
lack of personal devastation is something he’s become
“very conscious of, especially when you’re married
to someone who is constantly, daily living under the
crushing weight of it. You get very aware of it very
quickly. I have a lot of friends whose parents have died,
who’ve had disastrous things happen to them and their
family, so I am very aware that I’m very lucky and that
I probably have a lot of terrible things coming my way.”
Because they’re in their 30s and have been together
for ages, people bug him (a little) and his wife (a lot
more) about having kids, which, for the record, is
something they might do one day. They talk about
adopting, but are in no particular rush. “We very much
like our lives, so we will continue to put it off, it seems
like, for a little while,” he said. “We have a dog. We like
the dog a lot.” It’s not the responsibility that frightens
them so much as the potential for complicating an
already harmonious situation. “I’ve had my friends be
like, ‘Yeah, it really was hard on our relationship.’ I’m
not saying we couldn’t overcome it, but, again, we really
get along and have a very good dynamic. She works
very hard, and a lot as well, so when we’re together, we
really try to enjoy each other and hang out.” The Miller-
Rogens are domestic animals, more inclined to stay
home and crush HGTV or the Million Dollar Listing
shows than furiously socialise.
Rogen’s understated and somewhat incredulous
relationship to fame gives him a certain credibility
with fans: He’s a tour guide with a backstage pass, an
Everyman moving through hallucinatory worlds – and
who can’t, on some level, relate to that? His stories of
surreal encounters with public figures – Kanye turning
up unannounced at his door one morning, asking him
to play basketball; negging Paul Ryan’s request for a
selfie, in front of his children; introducing Tom Cruise
to the concept of internet porn – kill on late-night TV
and Howard Stern by depicting the deranged alternate
universe of celebrity (actually a small village where
they all know one another) and the various ways its
inhabitants can fall out of touch with reality.
“I’ve worked with enough actors to know that on
the grand scale of actors, I’m pretty well-adjusted,”
he said. “I think on the grand scale of humans, I have
friends who are constantly reminding me that I have
very little insight into the struggles of the average
person. It’s not lost on me that there are massive
elements of life that I just don’t have to deal with. I’m
aware of it, but it limits the amount of true grounding
I can have, I think. At the same time, I do think I try
to steer away from being a crazy person as much as
humanly possible, in an active way.”
Weed helps. For 20-plus years, it has been as
essential to his daily life as his glasses and shoes – an
A