With guest stars like Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen‘s new series makes use of every cameo.
The Golden Globe nominee explained that getting rejected by stars “happened a lot” while casting his Apple TV+ show The Studio, to the point that they “literally didn’t shoot” one episode that called for a specific actor.
“There were a lot of people who, if they said no, we’d have to reimagine the whole episode to some degree,” said Rogen on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast.
“The only people we didn’t get were a couple scheduling issues, and then there were two people who just fundamentally were not interested in playing themselves,” he added. “None of them could do it when we needed them. So we literally didn’t shoot the episode.”
Most recently, The Studio featured a cameo from Smile (2022) and Smile 2 (2024) auteur Parker Finn, whom is courted to make a ripoff of his own franchise, entitled Wink. For Rogen, the part wouldn’t have worked with anyone else.
“Not only are they famous people, but the role they occupy in Hollywood is very specific for each person. There’s him and no one else,” explained Rogen. “We needed the director of a horror franchise that is replicable in another, shittier way. And we were like, who does Smile? Parker Finn! We thought, M3GAN maybe, but it’s not quite the same thing. What we liked about Smile is that he kept doing them. If Parker Finn had said no, I don’t know what we would have done.”
