John Mulaney, Adam Brody and the Comedy Actor Roundtable

Sit six uniquely hilarious men around a table for an hour and simply try not to laugh. That proved an impossible task in early May, as Adam Brody (Nobody Wants This), Ted Danson (A Man on the Inside), John Mulaney (Everybody’s Live), Seth Rogen (The Studio), Jason Segel (Shrinking) and Julio Torres (Fantasmas) assembled for THR‘s Comedy Actor Emmy Roundtable. In fact, the sextet was regularly in stitches as the conversation moved from shocking exec notes to industry expectations and the projects that got away.

What is the wildest or most amusing thing you’ve all read or heard about yourself?

TED DANSON Two stick in my head. The headline was “Too Tepid Ted.”

ALL Oooh.

SETH ROGEN They got you with alliteration!

DANSON And then Mr. “Thinks He’s So Wonderful” Danson.

JOHN MULANEY Oh man, that person didn’t like you at all.

JASON SEGEL I have one.

ROGEN “Too Tall Segel.”

SEGEL I wish! I did a movie in New Orleans, and I’d eaten a lot during this movie and gained a bunch of weight, and the review, which was a very nice review, said, “Jason Segel, an actor on the verge of a Gerard Depardieu-style expansion.”

ROGEN You fought that off nicely. Maybe that’s what you needed.

SEGEL A wake-up call. (Laughter.)

If you saw “a Seth Rogen type” or “an Adam Brody type” or an insert-your-name type in a script, do you have a sense of what that might be?

ROGEN At one point, it was like a schlubby stoner type, and then it evolved into a neurotic, middle-aged Jewish type. Basically, those are the two types. They’re also the roles I give myself consistently, so I think I fit them nicely.

ADAM BRODY Deservedly or undeservedly, mine would be a nerd and then, later, a more confident nerd. Almost like the male version of, like, “She’s beautiful, but she doesn’t know it.”

ROGEN You’re a manic pixie dream boy.

JULIO TORRES Ooh, have you ever gotten a makeover in a show?

BRODY No …

TORRES You know, where they take off your glasses and they’re like, “Whoa, he’s so hot.”

ROGEN I’m going to do that throughout this roundtable. (Dramatically removes his glasses.)

ALL Whoa.

SEGEL He was Superman all along.

John, what would “a John Mulaney type” be?

MULANEY When it has come up, it means, like, a genital-less, “Hey, ba-ba-ba-ba.” Like a soulless wooden boy, who’s fast on his feet.

DANSON Do you really think that of yourself?

MULANEY No.

DANSON Tell me what you think of yourself.

MULANEY This was not the question.

DANSON No, this is the follow-up.

ROGEN Ted has hijacked the interview. Not too tepid now, is he? (Laughter.)

MULANEY I’m much less nerdy than people think, whatever that means. I feel a little more weight in my feet when I walk around.

DANSON Confidence, yes. You couldn’t do what you’re doing if you weren’t confident.

MULANEY Oh, that’s the thing. I think we all have confidence that we have to hide, so you seem [humble]. (In a facetious voice.) I mean, I’m so grateful to be here.

TORRES I’m so surprised!

MULANEY Yeah, I can’t believe by pursuing entertainment, single-mindedly, for 20 years, it worked out. (Laughter.)

How about “a Julio Torres type”?

TORRES It depends on who wrote it because sometimes they just mean annoying young person I don’t understand. But if I hear, “They really want you for this part,” it’s like, “Oh, it’s a barista with a purple streak. Got it. Yeah.”

ROGEN Who’s like on the phone when you’re there with a personal problem?

TORRES Yes, a barista with a little phone being like, “My customers are microaggressing me. I feel attacked!” (Laughter.)

SEGEL I usually play a guy who’s having a hard time with something and everyone’s like, “Oh, I hope he gets out of this jam.” I’ve got these big, dog eyes that make you feel like, “Oh, he means well.”

Looking back, what were the most challenging periods of your collective careers and what is the project that turned it around?

SEGEL After How I Met Your Mother came to an end, which was like a decade of being on one show and doing a bunch of romantic comedies, I decided I wanted to see if I was good at dramas. I dove in hard and I thought, “Look out world, here comes me doing drama.” And it turns out, nobody gives a shit. If you want to do a big career pivot, you have to care the most. So, I did a movie called The End of the Tour…

BRODY That was amazing.

SEGEL Thank you. That movie made me feel like, “Oh, you got like a shot at this.” Nobody saw it, but it was important for me because I didn’t want to be the guy who sat his whole life wondering if he could do something.

Seth, there was a period following Freaks and Greeks where you struggled to get traction. You said recently, “I was smoking weed on Jason Segel’s couch, complaining that I wasn’t getting sent on the auditions that he was getting sent on or getting the scripts that he was getting sent.”

ROGEN Yeah, he had a stack of scripts this big (lifts his arm high). I would come to his apartment every day and I was like, “Wow, I don’t have any scripts.”

So, what changed?

ROGEN Luck, honestly. But I was also just a young person who expected the world to bend to their will. So, there were a few years of unemployment, but looking back, it really wasn’t that bad. And I was constantly working with Judd [Apatow] — he’d get paid to rewrite movies and he’d throw me and Evan [Goldberg], my partner, some money to help him. And we were writing Pineapple Express and finishing Superbad throughout that time, but it was aggravating because I kept seeing movies get made that had so much less care and thought put into them than the ones we were working on. And this was a time of particularly bad high school movies and weed-related movies, which is what we really were trying to do. So, it was frustrating, but at the same time, I got to rewrite Bad Boys II, which was pretty exciting.

SEGEL I totally remember that.

ROGEN I’d say after The Interview came out was a much harder time in my career because I legitimately thought I had eliminated myself as someone who was viable to work with. I was very worried that no comedy we made again would seem funny because it had been taken to this extremely serious place. I felt like maybe I’d pushed things further than you can come back from.

But it was that experience that enabled you to make The Studio, no?

ROGEN For sure. Because we got exposed to the real higher-level echelon of studio inner workings. We were in meetings with the CEOs all of a sudden, so we saw a raw version of the thought that goes into the decision-making at the highest level of the studios. Like, I got to spend a lot of time with [then Sony Entertainment CEO] Michael Lynton, who’s an objectively terrifying human being who had a completely bizarre set of moral tools that he was using to make these decisions.

TORRES Moral tools! (Laughter.)

ROGEN That’s a nice way of saying it. I’d never been around people who run multibillion-dollar companies before that. So, yeah, The Interview gave us that exposure, for better or worse.

MULANEY Do you remember when you felt like, “Oh, I’m OK, this moment has passed”?

ROGEN I do, actually. I got cast in the Steve Jobs movie right around when it was happening, and I was talking to [co-star] Kate Winslet about the stuff because it was still petering out, and she was like, “Oh yeah, wasn’t there something with you and some movie?” I was just like, “Oh yeah, no one remembers anything.” In a good way, everyone’s focused on their own shit. And this huge thing, because it didn’t happen to them, two months later they’ve completely forgotten about it.

TORRES I was going to say, from the outside, I was thinking like, what is this valley you’re talking about?

ROGEN For me, it seemed bleak.

BRODY It also didn’t seem like a bad look for you, from my perspective.

MULANEY Yeah, among creative people, it was very badass.

ROGEN It seemed cool but also — and this is the thing I honestly have the hardest time admitting — the worst thing [about it all for me] is that it was not viewed as a good movie.

TORRES How do you feel about it?

ROGEN I haven’t watched it in a long time, honestly. And I watch a lot of my work and I’m very proud, but my fear is I’ll watch that one and be like, “Eh, maybe I got lost in the sauce a little bit.”

Adam, there was a while after The O.C. where you were precious about the roles you’d take or not take, and then you got married and had a child, and your whole calculus changed. Talk to me about that transition and how the choices differed on the other side.

BRODY I wasn’t, like, wildly precious, but with hindsight, more precious than I needed to be, and I definitely passed on some things that would’ve been fun, even though I know they weren’t that cool.

Why were you passing?

BRODY I guess I was like, OK, I’m on this teen drama and I know I’m opinionated but I like my taste — my talent is hit-or-miss but my taste is pretty good and I feel like I’d like what I do to really represent that, and I just didn’t find it. Then as my prospects dimmed and dwindled, I did get a little frustrated. And then finally, and maybe it was because I got married and had a child, maybe it was just ’cause it was time, but I kind of let go of the reins and said, “I’ll just go to work and I’ll do the best thing around.” And ironically, that led to other better things.

Ted, in recent years, you’ve said, “I want to keep working as long as I physically can. I want to know what it’s like to be funny at every age.” What is it like to be funny at this age and how is it different from being funny earlier in your career?

DANSON It hurts a little more. (Laughter.) When you see in the script, “He runs, he scampers off,” you’re like, “Ugh.”

ROGEN Couldn’t they scamper away from him?

DANSON Seriously!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the first role you’ve taken where age is part of the joke. When you see “set in a retirement home,” do you hesitate? Or do you just see Mike Schur attached and sign on?

DANSON It’s Mike Schur, it really is. I thought The Good Place was remarkable, and at 77, I want to be in things that are purposeful, that are comedy and that make people think. And yeah, it’s fun to make use of who you are in that moment of your life, and this is an opportunity to do that. So, I really couldn’t be happier.

SEGEL What a nice place to be.

MULANEY When Cheers was at its height and then you do Three Men and a Baby, those must have been very big moments and very busy times. Did you have a moment to yourself or was it a very different kind of existence?

DANSON [That was during my] first marriage. So, I was not the best husband in the world and I wanted to act and I was happy to go do a movie during the two and a half months that we had off [during the summer hiatus]. It was exciting. Very rock and roll. Now, I would hate it. I’m in a marriage [with actress Mary Steenburgen] that thrills me. I don’t want to be away for even two nights. If somebody were to offer me something in Budapest, no! I just can’t imagine.

Seth, with The Studio, you’re portraying studio execs as somewhat sympathetic people who seemingly hate the fact that they’re constantly disappointing the directors and stars they love by giving them notes that they don’t want to hear. That said, what’s the worst note you’ve ever gotten?

ROGEN We’ve gotten some very bad notes over the years. Sometimes it comes in the form of, like, you genuinely feel as though you’ve found a movie star and the studio’s just like, “No, that person’s not funny.” We’re trying to put, like, Michael Cera and Jonah Hill in something, and we’re like, “We think these guys have a future,” and they’re like, “We don’t see it.” Or like Emma Stone, that took some convincing and it’s shocking in retrospect. But truthfully, notes used to really stress me out, and I used to get bent out of shape about them, but I now feel no pressure to even …

DANSON Perform on them?

ROGEN Acknowledge them. I assume if one’s important, it’ll make its way to me eventually.

DANSON And one of the best parts of success is the notes start to go away.

ROGEN Sometimes. This is something that I am now very in tune with, and the mentality of a lot of studio executives is to distance themselves from failure but give themselves a close proximity to success. And so if something seems as though it’s going to be successful, they actually want to be more involved in it creatively and give more notes, so once it’s a hit, they can be like, “That’s ’cause of me! And now, you’ll thank me at an awards show.” (Laughter.)

John and Julio, you’re both making these shows that are so uniquely yours, which has me curious about the notes you get.

MULANEY I’ve learned that before someone can start giving notes, ask them questions about what they think you should do. You know, like, “We have an astrologer coming on, should I bring them on in the first act, and have them sit there, and then we bring out Gary Coleman and Arnold Schwarzenegger? Or do we bring the astrologer out in the third act?” Just start to give them ownership over something that isn’t even [significant].

ROGEN Like a chew toy.

SEGEL Yes!

TORRES You know they’re going to see this.

ROGEN No they won’t. (Laughter.)

What’s something that you can’t believe you got away with thus far?

MULANEY It’s not so much getting away with, but I really respect that they’ve let me have so many big music performances on, because they have a lot of data about how music does on TV and it doesn’t do as well as you might think. I’m dealing with a very data-driven company, as a lot of these companies are these days, and that stuff’s kind of interesting to learn. Just like where the gas and brake is of people tuning in and out. And it doesn’t really color what we do, but it’s interesting information to have.

ROGEN Do they tell you?

MULANEY Yeah. Tune-outs. Completions. Things like that.

ROGEN I know nothing.

Do you want to know?

ROGEN I’d be curious if there was something overwhelmingly prevalent. You know, like, every time you speak, people turn the show off. (Laughter.)

What about you, Julio? What kind of notes do you get?

ROGEN Yeah, how do they even begin to approach it? I would love to try to see them give you notes …

TORRES With Fantasmas, it was more like reminders of the runtime.

ROGEN Great note. (Laughter.)

Julio, you’ve historically not had a credit card, you don’t open mail …Are these things still true?

TORRES These are all still things.

SEGEL Holy shit.

BRODY I have questions.

Has your aversion to a lot of elements of modern life ever gotten in your way professionally?

TORRES Well, it’s not an aversion to modern life. It’s an aversion to …

DANSON Paying for shit?

ROGEN Debt?

TORRES No, it’s an aversion to being part of systems that I don’t consent to being a part of.

SEGEL Wow.

TORRES I get to decide whether or not I play a board game, why am I being forced to have a credit score? According to who? You’re grading me on my credit? Like, no. And the opening of the mail is because it’s like, yeah, what do you want from me? Whatever’s in the mail I have no interest in. (Laughter.)

John, you look like your mind has been blown …

MULANEY His answer about how the credit score is not a game he consented to, I just really liked. So, I was more like, can I apply this to my own life? And then immediately, no.

SEGEL Because how do you buy the computer to email?

BRODY How do you buy anything?

MULANEY Cash.

BRODY Everything in cash?

MULANEY Check? I don’t know. (To Torres.) Sorry, you should answer this.

TORRES By credit card, I mean literal credit card. I do have debit. I do have money in the bank. Yeah. Also, my family was burned very early on by that system, so the idea of debt really scares me. If I don’t have the money, I don’t want to spend it.

DANSON This whole table is thinking, “I need to reexamine every choice I’ve ever made.”

MULANEY You know what I was thinking? I’m going to sign him up, and I’ll pay it, but I’m going to sign him up for a credit card. (Laughter.)

TORRES But why do I need one?

ROGEN For comedy.

MULANEY Remember on Montel Williams when someone would be afraid of cotton balls, so a big cotton man would come out? It’ll be like that. I’m going to book you an H&R Block commercial and then I’m going to get you a credit score. (Laughter.)

Looking back, which is the project you fought hardest for?

DANSON I’ve always done what was put in front of me next. I’ve never had a pile of scripts. I’m happiest when I’m like a contract player. “Here, do this next.”

BRODY I really wanted Blue’s Clues early on.

ROGEN And you fought for it?

BRODY I tried real hard, yeah. It was like 1999, I auditioned for it, I wanted it, I didn’t get it. But I would’ve loved it.

DANSON I don’t know that one.

BRODY It’s a show for toddlers. But it’s all of those early ones. There was a Dawson’s Creek role — I read with Scott Speedman, sweating.

TORRES Wait, which role?

BRODY I believe it went to Michael Pitt.

TORRES Oh, they wanted pouty lips.

MULANEY (To Torres.) Do you know the role?

TORRES No, I just know the actor.

ROGEN He is pouty. (Laughter.)

Anyone else have a role that you thought would’ve transformed your career had you only gotten it?

ROGEN I auditioned for hundreds and hundreds of things. I’m sure a lot of us did. And if anything, I marvel at how few of them turned out to be anything I would be remotely happy to have been a part of ultimately. And you build these things up in your head. It’s like, “If I get this, my whole life will be changed.” And then you’re like, it was Final Destination 4 and it was not going to change my life in the way I imagined it would.

SEGEL (To Rogen.) I was thinking about when you said I had the pile of scripts early on, and I was like, “Yeah, but I didn’t get any of them!”

ROGEN No, it’s true. But at that time, an audition was the win.

What’s the best or worst advice you’ve ever gotten from a fellow actor or filmmaker? I’ll just say here that Judd Apatow was once asked the note he gives most often, and he said, “I used to say to Seth Rogen, ‘Less jizz, more heart.’ “

ROGEN Or “Less semen, more emotion.”

SEGEL He told me, “Less emotion, more semen.”

ROGEN Thus is the balance.

TORRES But semen is emotional.

ROGEN Not the way I was using it, I guess. (Laughter.)

BRODY Is the semen referring to, like, dick jokes?

ROGEN Yes. I think that was code for, like, less dick jokes, more on story emotionally, basically, which is a good note to get. Judd would also just scream “Booooo” from the other room sometimes if he didn’t like what we were doing.

SEGEL He once screamed at me, “Every time you laugh [during a scene], it costs me thousands of dollars!” (Laughter.)

BRODY That’s great.

SEGEL He also told me the only way you’re going to make it is if you write your own material. But the best advice I ever got was from an ex-girlfriend who said, “You should never take parts that another actor could do.” She’s like, “You’re a weird guy. Lean into it. Only take things that you can’t imagine someone else playing.”

TORRES That’s actually a really good thing for a partner to say.

ROGEN I mostly take parts Adam Brody could do but decided not to. (Laughter.)

MULANEY Lorne Michaels told me that he always pictured Mike Nichols sitting in the audience of every SNL, and he wanted to do a show that Mike would like or that he’d approve of. So, I do that.

So, who’s your Mike Nichols?

MULANEY Fred Armisen. Would Fred like this?

TORRES I’m going to ask him what percentage of your work he’s liked, and then I’ll let you know.

MULANEY It’s not a lot. (Laughter.)

If you were guaranteed a greenlight, what project would you start working on tomorrow?

TORRES I have a project that has been rejected by everyone who can reject a project.

ROGEN That means it’s good.

TORRES It stars a puppet …

ROGEN Do you know who you’re sitting beside? [Segel is well known for his fascination with puppets, which led to, among other things, the Dracula puppet musical in his film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.]

TORRES Yes, I’m aware. It stars a puppet, which is why no one wants it.

ROGEN Because of him (nods to Segel). You ruined puppets.

SEGEL Sorry, buddy. (Laughter.)

TORRES She’s sort of a hybrid between a demon and a Real Housewife. Her name is Batwina, and she’s a puppet that’s had a lot of work done and she’s evil and I think ends up becoming a publicist. No disrespect to publicists.

ROGEN That’s a good one.

MULANEY You know who I’d love to play is Chief Brody from Jaws, but in a prequel about his life in New York as a cop before he got to Amity Island. But I don’t have the rights to the book, the movie, any piece of it. I’m putting that into the world because I don’t want to do the legwork of running down any of the rights, but now that it’s out there …

SEGEL I wrote a draft of Space Ghost as a movie with my friends Bart and Ashley, who made Yellowjackets, that I’d love to make one day. It’s a live-action coming-of-age story about the superhero left behind. It’s just sitting on a shelf.

DANSON I’ve never been and never will be, to everyone’s relief, a writer or a director or producer. I just love acting and I’m literally in what I would dream about being in, working with the people who I’d dream about working with. I’m just so content where I am right now.

BRODY It’s so nice.

ROGEN It makes me realize how rarely I’m around someone who’s happy. I don’t know how to deal with it.

DANSON Hold on. I’m just examining, am I full of shit? (Laughter.)

Let’s end on a lighter but hopefully revealing note: What does the algorithm think you want? As in, what gets served up to you?

TORRES I get dental surgery videos, and there’s something I maybe do find morbidly interesting about them. And also training on how to nail your audition to work in Disney parks.

ROGEN Like, people that give advice on Instagram about how to do that?

TORRES Yes.

MULANEY So, what’s the best advice?

TORRES It’s a lot of “stay in character no matter what.” And I actually find that genre of acting incredibly fascinating.

ROGEN I’m friends with someone who was a Disney princess. She has amazing stories.

TORRES Here’s my question: So, say someone is acting as Aladdin at a Disney park, right? Do you go up to them and say, “Watch out for Jafar”? Or do you say, “Congratulations on defeating Jafar”? Like, where are they in their journey?

ROGEN I think they’re nimble enough that they’d go with whatever version of it.

MULANEY It’d be great if there was only one right answer.

SEGEL I don’t like Aladdin. You know why? In that song “A Whole New World,” he goes, “Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

ROGEN Yeah, it’s a little aggro.

SEGEL It’s super aggressive. She can close her eyes if she wants to.

ROGEN I remember asking my friend, like, “I bet there’s a lot of guys who are handsy with the princesses?” She’s like, “Oh, very much.” That’s a big problem.

BRODY What do they say?

TORRES “Hehehe. Not today!”

ROGEN No, they say, “The prince wouldn’t like that.”

TORRES Ewwww!

ROGEN Yeah, that’s the go-to line if someone’s perving out on you. So, if you’re watching this and someone has said to you, “The prince wouldn’t like that,” you’re a fucking sicko. Leave Disneyland.

This story appeared in the June 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.