Jason Segel reveals Judd Apatow's life-changing advice on “Freaks and Geeks” set: 'You're a weird dude'
"He was right, and it changed my life."
Although Freaks and Geeks was canceled before the first season even finished airing, the teen dramedy has proven over time to be an incredible wellspring of talent. Before the cast and crew disbanded, star Jason Segel remembers executive producer Judd Apatow giving him some life-changing career advice.
"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,'" Segel recently recalled to Today host Willie Geist. "'You need to learn how to do it, so I'm going to teach you how to do it.'"
Segel added that "It was a bit of an apprenticeship period, where we literally learned how to write a script. And 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 was right, and it changed my life. I wrote Forgetting Sarah Marshall like a year after that."
Related: Freaks and Geeks cast: Where are they now?
Freaks and Geeks was a quintessentially late-'90s take on high school angst and ennui. Created by future Bridesmaids director Paul Feig and produced by Apatow, the series ran for only 18 episodes on NBC between 1999 and 2000. In addition to Segel, it launched the careers of Seth Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, and Busy Philipps.
It isn't unheard of for a network series to become a launching pad for so much talent, though it is unusual that such a cavalcade of stars were able to mount careers with such staying power with only a season's worth of time to prove themselves. Segel has a theory about that.
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"Here's what I think happened," he said. "Freaks and Geeks happened, we did one other show called Undeclared, similar cast, 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."
Segel watched as Apatow "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. 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."
The next day, "contracts arrived and they said, 'Go write the script and we'll shoot it next year,'" Segel remembered. "So I shot that the first hiatus of How I Met Your Mother."
Related: Jason Segel says Harrison Ford shook canoe they were in to try to capsize him: 'Sorry, kid'
Forgetting Sarah Marshall released in 2008, the year after Knocked Up, and both enjoyed tremendous success. The films transformed Segel and Rogen not only into bankable stars, but in-demand screenwriters. Apatow and the pair have reteamed in various combinations over the years for films like This Is 40 and Pineapple Express.
They've all kept Freaks and Geeks close to their hearts too, with Apatow saying he'll "always be proud of it," considering it's "everybody's origin story," and Segel calling it "one of the best experiences of my life for sure. It sort of informed everything I did since."
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