James Franco Addressed The Rumors Of A ‘Freaks And Geeks’ Reunion

Rumors of a potential Freaks and Geeks reunion have persisted for years, despite Judd Apatow and Paul Feig alternately denying them completely and making purposefully opaque statements like “you never know,” which is Hollywood-speak for “absolutely not.” But we Freaks and Geeks obsessives beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past anyway, hoping that if we continue to put light pressure on Apatow, Feig, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Busy Philipps, Jason Segel, and Seth Rogen, they’ll eventually break.

They haven’t yet. They’ve even gone so far as to suggest the reunion would be a terrible idea, one that would systematically destroy all of our pleasant memories associated with the cult hit. Apatow recently joked that “all of those characters died in a Supermax prison” and, earlier this year, painted a similarly bleak portrait of the fates of some of the less-ambitious Freaks. “I don’t know if you really want to know what happened to those people,” said Apatow. “I don’t think good things happened to a fair amount of them, so it might be deeply sad to see what happened to Jason Segel’s character or James Franco’s character.”

Even though Apatow has essentially told us get a grip to move the hell on with our lives many times over, we’re still not ready to let go. Even Rolling Stone’s guilty of clinging desperately onto the past, asking Franco about the chances of a reunion in a piece published today. During an interview with Franco about his forthcoming Stephen King adaptation, 11.22.63, Andy Greene explains, “we couldn’t resist asking about the possibility of [Freaks and Geeks] returning.” We get it, Andy.

Franco, for his part, took the question in stride, and gave a more hopeful answer than Apatow’s, what with the Supermax prison and the deep sadness. “I mean, I don’t know what that would look like,” Franco said with a laugh. (A James Franco laugh could mean literally anything, especially in this context. Is he laughing with us? At us? At the moon? Hard to say.) “Everybody’s kind of old,” he added. “I think for the most part we’ve had these little reunions just for photo shoots over the years, and everybody seems to still really like each other and still have a great love for what we did on that show. And obviously I still work very closely with Seth [Rogen] all the time. So, if somebody came up with an idea that didn’t totally suck, I’m sure it’s a possibility.”

Hear that, fellow Freaks fans? The dream of once again seeing Cardellini don Lindsay Weir’s army jacket is still alive. Somebody come up with an idea that doesn’t totally suck.

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