Seth Rogen & Anna Kendrick Interview For ’50/50′

Inspired by personal experiences, ’50/50′ is an original story about friendship, love, survival and finding humor in unlikely places. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen star as best friends whose lives are changed by a cancer diagnosis. Rogen also serves as producer, along with Evan Goldberg and Ben Karlin. Jonathan Levine directs from a script by Will Reiser. “We worked with Will on Da Ali G show, and it was shortly after that we learned he was sick.” Rogen recalls. “As shocking, sad, confusing and generally screwed up as it was; we couldn’t ignore that because we were so ill-equipped to deal with the situation, funny things kept happening. Will got better, and when he did, we thought the best way to pull something good out of the situation was to get him to write a screenplay. Ideally we wanted to make a film that would be as funny, sad, and hopefully as honest as the experience we went through. As soon as the script was completed, it quickly became a passion project for all of us. It helped us come to terms with Will’s struggle as well as our own experiences.” ’50/50′ is the story of a guy’s transformative and, yes, sometimes funny journey to health. ’50/50′ draws its emotional core from Will Reiser’s own experience with cancer and reminds us that friendship and love, no matter what bizarre turns they take, are the greatest healers. Alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen, ’50/50 ‘ stars Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston and Philip Baker Hall. The film is set for release September 30th in the US, and January 6th in the UK.

Your character is the source of a lot of the humour in the film. How did you walk the line of being funny with such a sensitive premise?

Seth Rogen: The characters trying to be funny so that gives you a lot of luxury as an actor, because not all the jokes need to land (laughs). To me the only line was how obnoxious can I be and still have the audience believe that Joseph’s character would hang out with this guy essentially, and not tell him to f*ck off (laughs), that was really the line I was careful of. Because there were times when I would antagonize him so much that you would think he’d punch me in the face and never talk to me again. Honestly that was the balance, how far could I push Joseph really, and still have him be a guy he would still want to be around. As far as the audience goes and pushing their limits, we try to do that, but we test the movies a lot, it’s not our goal to put jokes in the movie to offend people — some people, but not all people (laughs). We let the audience tell us, and if there was any joke that is universally hated, we take it out of the movie. We would never leave it in to prove a point.

The hair cutting scene is amazing. That must have been nerve-racking to shoot?

Seth Rogen: You know, it was actually fun to shoot. It was a little scary because we improvised a lot of dialogue in it – which is pretty f*cking stupid to be honest, for a scene like that, but we did it (laughs). That was actually the first day of shooting, which makes it even stupider because we weren’t even THAT comfortable with our characters or anything like that (laughs). We wanted it to feel real, we didn’t want the fact that we could literally only do it once make it feel less natural. So we really just tried to make it feel loose. I didn’t know what Joseph was going to do, honestly, if he was going to start crying ,or if he was going to make it really emotional, if he wanted to joke around. I really wasn‘t sure how he was going to approach it. And it was great how we did it, it felt totally real, it was pretty intense under the surface, but it felt very natural. I remember what we did have was a big list of bald guys, because we wanted to reference funny bald guys, so we had a big list; Michael Stipe, Patrick Stewart, Gorbachev, Jason Statham, Mr Clean was on there. That’s what we went in armed with: A razor and a list of bald men (laughs).

What did you think of Joseph’s impersonation of you?

Seth Rogen: That wasn’t scripted, it stung a little (laughs). That happens a lot on a movie where I happen to be working with someone for months – I realise they’ve been secretly developing a really insulting impression of me the whole time (laughs).

What gravitated you in wanting to play this character?

Anna Kendrick: I liked that Catherine’s confidence was always hanging on a thread, in fact that confidence was not real at all, she was projecting that confidence. I think I’ve played characters that tend to more think that they’re hot sh*t, the insecurity is further back in their head. I liked how soft and vulnerable she was. I think we’ve all been in the position of trying to sound like we know what we’re doing but suspecting that everyone can see right through it. That was sort of sweet and was cathartic coming off the Oscars. I could relate (laughs).

How did you balance Catherine’s naiveté with her professionalism, to make her believable as you did?

Anna Kendrick: I think it did help that she’s….I’m allowed to make mistakes, and sometimes tip the balance too far in one direction or the other. Because every time she gets too in her head, and starts to think what clinical advice she can give to save the day here, that’s not really helping anybody. And when she clams up because she doesn’t know what to do, that’s not helping anybody either. So I was just allowed to be pretty bad at my job, which was nice (laughs). I think it’s just something everyone does when they walk out the door, I think sometimes I’m just doing a semi-convincing impression of a functioning human being.

Seth Rogen: I don’t even do that (laughs).

Anna Kendrick: (Laughs). I just tried to project some kind of understanding of what I was saying, and if I failed at that it was ok.