Seth Rogen and his team are currently in the writing stages for Season 2 of their hit series “The Studio.” But according to the actor, there’s one episode being crafted that may need to be scrapped entirely — and it all depends on if the Apple TV+ series can get the guest star they’re hoping for.
Appearing on the latest episode of Josh Horowitz’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, taped during a recent live event in Los Angeles, Rogen conceded that there’s definitely some pressure to meet the bar that was set in Season 1, in terms of guest stars. Famous faces dropping in for an episode or two became a staple of the series, notching it a total of six Emmy nominations just for guest actors alone.
“I mean, I’m currently working on an episode where, if one person says no, we have to throw away the entire episode idea and start from scratch and write an entirely new episode,” Rogen revealed. “Which is not the smartest way to make a television show, if I’m being very honest. But it’s the only thing we know how to do at this point.”
Rogen didn’t name names for that potential guest star, though host Josh Horowitz joked that an actor like Vin Diesel might be that unattainable.
Why couldn’t “The Studio” just get another celebrity to fill the bit, you may wonder? Well, according to Rogen, he and his collaborator Evan Goldberg are very particular about their approach to guest stars.
“It is very nice, in that we have had a lot of people who are fans of the show coming to us and saying that they would be willing to be a part of it, which is great,” he said. “But the truth is, the way we write the episodes is like, we sort of come up with a very specific joke that very few people could actually do, you know?”
Rogen pointed to Martin Scorsese’s episode of “The Studio” — which earned one of those Emmy nominations — as a prime example, explaining that they had to recruit a director who would believably be making a huge-budget film about Jonestown, that would then be called “Kool-Aid.”
You can watch the full episode of “Happy Sad Confused” in the video above. “The Studio” is available to stream on Apple TV+.
