Sony Pictures
At an event in SoHo for his pottery-ashtray-smoking furniture/paraphernalia brand Houseplant, BroBible had a chance to chat a bit with actor, writer, director and producer Seth Rogen. Being a millennial dude who came of age watching Rogen’s comedies, there was only one movie I could think of asking him about — This Is The End.
When listing the best comedies of the 2000s and 2010s, This Is The End — written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg — isn’t necessarily a film that’s at the top of lists, as it’s more of a cult classic than a stone-cold masterpiece. But to men of a certain age like myself, that movie was like the comedic Avengers, as it not only rounded up some of the funniest actors in Hollywood, but had them playing themselves.
Now, with this being a more casual event for his pottery brand Houseplant and not an official content opportunity for a movie, it wasn’t the sort of situation where I could stick a camera in his face and record him — like I did with The Rock a few weeks ago — but I did get enough from Seth that I could report on it the old fashioned way.
Seth Rogen tells us how they wound up casting Channing Tatum as Danny McBride’s slave in This Is The End
According to Rogen, they always knew they wanted an A-lister to play Danny McBride’s gimp, and Channing Tatum was their first choice. Why? Because Jonah Hill had a relationship with him from 21 Jump Street, leading Rogen and his creative partner Evan Goldberg to ask Hill if they thought Tatum would be interested.
Hill thought Tatum would be game, so Rogen simply emailed him — he even whipped out his phone in an effort to find it — something along the lines of, “Yo dude — would you be down to play Danny McBride’s gimp?”
Obviously, Tatum — or, as McBride dubs him in the film, ‘Channing Taint-Yum’ — wound up saying yes and became an infamous part of one of that generation’s best, and final, major studio comedies.