Though it was canceled after just one season, the NBC teen comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks helped launch the careers of many of its young stars, as well as cementing executive producer Judd Apatow as a major player in Hollywood. And now, 25 years later, Jason Segel still remembers the "life-changing" advice he once received from Apatow.
Segel, who currently stars in the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, recalled the advice from his mentor while speaking with Today host Willie Geist on Sunday morning.
"He gave me great advice. That was where Judd took me and a couple others aside and he said, 'Listen, if you can improv the way you're improv-ing on this show, you can write. You just need to learn how to do it, so I'm going to teach you how to do it,'" the 44-year-old explained. "And it was like a bit of an apprenticeship period, where we literally learned how to write a script."
"And then his parting words to me were, 'Listen, Jace, you're a weird dude. The only way you're going to make it is if you write your own material,'" he continued. "And he was right, it changed my life. I wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall like, a year after that."
Segel also opened up about his theory on why so many of the actors from the series went on to do big things, including not just himself but Seth Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Busy Philipps, John Francis Daley, and Martin Starr. And it all boils down to an apparent vendetta.
"So here's what I think happened. Freaks and Geeks got canceled, we did one other show called Undeclared, similar cast." he shared. "And I believe that Judd went on like a Monte Cristo-style revenge mission to show that Hollywood was wrong and that these kids were good at acting."
"So he systematically started putting us in movies. He put Seth in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and then Seth did Knocked Up as the lead, and he put the rest of us in as the friends," Segel recalled. "And after Knocked Up he took me to a Lakers game and he said, 'I think you're at bat. Do you have any ideas?' I said 'Yeah, I just started writing this thing called Forgetting Sarah Marshall."
"And I pitched him the idea at a Lakers game and the next day, basically contracts arrived and they said like, 'Go write the script and we'll shoot it next year,'" he shared. "So I shot that the first hiatus of How I Met Your Mother."
Looking back, Segel is still amazed that Apatow was willing to take such a huge chance on a 25-year-old. "Yeah, I was a young dude. But we had the naivety of youth," he added.
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