Seth Rogen Met With Every Hollywood Studio Head as Research for ‘The Studio’: “They Seem to Like It”

Seth Rogen brought his Hollywood satire The Studio to opening night of the SXSW festival on Friday, as he revealed the surprising inspirations and meetings he had before shooting.

The Studio stars Rogen as the newly appointed head of the fictional Continental Studios, as he attempts to keep things afloat financially while also trying to create artistic, prestige films.

“I was making The Fabelmans actually, and I was kind of just really inspired by how personal a movie Steven [Spielberg] was making; I also was rewatching The Larry Sanders Show because it was still kind of the midst of the pandemic, and I was very inspired by that,” Rogen told The Hollywood Reporter on the Austin, Texas, red carpet of how he conceived the show alongside his co-creators. “That’s something I grew up loving and so I thought that maybe we could make something that was very personal based on our experiences that was like the real, hopefully definitive, show business satire for this current era.”

Though Rogen has years of experience in the industry as an actor, writer, producer and director, he sat down with “every person, pretty much, who runs every studio in Hollywood,” as well as with many of the marketing heads, to learn what the real-life execs think.

“As much as we thought we knew, we had never really just sat down with the heads of the studios and been like, ‘Explain to us your fears, the things that stress you out the most, your greatest accomplishments, the things you’re proudest of.’ To really get that kind of first-hand information from the studio executives was great,” he added, noting, “They were all very excited and nervous to watch it I think. They seem to like it; we’ve sent it to a few of them and they’ve enjoyed it.”

Being set in Hollywood, the show is also jammed with cameo appearances; Martin Scorsese, Olivia Wilde, Ice Cube, Zoë Kravitz, Adam Scott and Greta Lee all appear in the newly released trailer. But, as Rogen noted, “Ted Sarandos does a cameo, which to me honestly was the hardest person to get in a lot of ways,” as the series streams on Apple TV+ and the powers that be were likely not too keen to give the Netflix co-CEO airtime.

Rogen also pointed out that the show is mainly mocking the personalities and egos of those in entertainment, but “we didn’t want to make a show that was cynical completely about the state of Hollywood. It’s a show that believes we can still make great films that do well and it happens all the time, so that was more what we were trying to comment on — just how hard it is to actually make a good movie in today’s film-making climate.”

The main cast is rounded out by Catherine O’Hara, Chase Sui Wonders, Ike Barinholtz and Kathryn Hahn, the latter playing the studio’s marketing chief. Hahn said she took plenty from her own career for the role, recalling, “There’s a lot of movies where you’re asked publicity things that you’re like, ‘This has nothing to do with the movie’ or you see posters or whatever and you’re like ‘Wow, this is a whole different bird that they’re marketing this as.’”

“The art versus commerce situation is for real,” the actress continued, adding that the show addresses that “it’s a weird moment. The idea of making money is very strange when it comes to streamers; everything just feels like vapors, like cryptocurrency. Sometimes you’re like how much is it making? But that’s when something original really can rise to the surface. So I think it speaks to a panic I feel in the industry at this particular moment, and a younger culture that is trying to keep it as hip as possible.”

The Studio starts streaming March 26 on Apple TV+.