Seth Rogen (‘Platonic’): ‘Seinfeld’s’ Jerry and Elaine ‘set the benchmark’ for ‘dynamic’ friendship between man and woman [Exclusive Video Interview]
“It was a mostly easy yes,” says “Platonic” star Seth Rogen about re-uniting with his “Neighbors” co-star Rose Byrne for the Apple TV+ comedy series. “The ‘Neighbors’ films are very outwardly comedic. Our tone is hard comedy, and that was one of my concerns or thoughts, honestly. That didn’t seem to be a thing that was anyone’s real main directive in television, you know what I mean? I think things had taken a much darker turn. Also, I’m just acutely aware of how different movies and TV are. And there are great filmmakers who make bad television and great television makers who make terrible films. It’s not like an interchangeable skill set by any means.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Rogen was drawn to the premise of the series, about former childhood best friends who reconnect as adults and try to get past the rift that led to their falling out. It was written by Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller, and has been renewed for season two.
“I really love the idea of it,” he explains. “And I think to me, honestly, one of the funniest dynamics ever in television is where the Jerry and Elaine friendship got. I think in the first few seasons of ‘Seinfeld,’ they were playing with the past, that they had dated and stuff like that. But I think when the show was in its maybe third or fourth season, all that fell by the wayside. That was, to me, a benchmark dynamic of this friendship between a man and a woman where they are truly pretty brutal with one another and they care about each other, but they don’t have kid gloves with each other and they’re not in love with each other.”
Rogen continues, “When you love someone, you just want to be nice to them and hopefully you want to really put their feelings above yours in many ways. But when you’re friends with someone, you often don’t do that. And so that, to me, was a really funny new area for me and Rose to play in because what we had done before was very much steeped in the fact that we are a married couple with a new baby. We have almost no conflict with each other. That was our whole idea for ‘Neighbors’ basically. It was like, what if we are a married couple who is not in conflict with each other, and instead we are a unified front in conflict with this other force? And in [‘Platonic’], that is not the idea. In this, we are in conflict with each other a lot.”
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