SWEATING IT

Seth Rogen Was ‘Petrified’ Pitching Black Actors This Idea

The creator and star of “The Studio” described the process as “one of the most nerve-racking moments of my entire life.”

The latest episode of The Studio “petrified” Seth Rogen more than any other so far, the star revealed, because he had to pitch Ice Cube and Ziwe on his race-focused Kool-Aid Man storyline.

“Trying to get Ice Cube in on the joke” was “legitimately petrifying,” Rogen told People.

In Episode 7 of the Apple TV+ show, titled “Casting,” Rogen and his fellow fictional Continental Studios executives desperately try to avoid being on the wrong side of the social media conversation by making the cringiest of changes to their developing Kool-Aid Man film.

Rogen said his conversation with Ice Cube, who voices the Kool-Aid Man in the episode, felt “very reflective of the joke in the show themselves, where I‘m trying to not be offensive and I‘m trying to explain my creative position.”

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The conflict kicks off when Maya (Kathryn Hahn) suggests it might be problematic to cast Ice Cube because he’s Black, setting off a frenzy of worry among the mostly white staffers.

Rogen‘s character wonders whether they had “done something racist” with the casting. The satirical take on what it would look like for a studio to scramble to be PC—to the point of inadvertently dismantling its own project—was what Rogen had to pitch to get the rapper, as well as comedian Ziwe on board.

Ice Cube is known for his serious mug, but Ziwe was also an intimidating call to make, he told People. After all, the running joke of Ziwe’s interview content is that she strives to make her white subjects uncomfortable for comedic effect. “The call with Ziwe, where I was explaining it to her, was one of the most nerve-racking moments of my entire life,” Rogen admitted.

The episode follows the high-strung execs as their worries grow over how the race of each actor cast will be perceived. Concern arises over why Kool-Aid Man (who Ice Cube emphatically states on the show “is Black”) is married to a character voiced by Asian actress Sandra Oh. Comedian Lil Rel Howery weighs in (in character as himself) that the casting “implies that a Black woman is not good enough to be with a successful Black man like Kool,” causing more anxiety-fueled changes to the film. Eventually, the whole cast is Black, and all the white writers quit out of fears of cultural appropriation.

The episode pulls back the curtain on how social media perception of a project could potentially make or break it—something Rogen feared might come for The Studio as well.

“Thank god people seem to get the joke as well,” he added.

Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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