Charlie Sheen ex Bree Olson got most of the attention for appearing on “The Howard Stern Show” this morning, but guess who else was on? A-list movie star and “Stern Show” regular Seth Rogen, who stopped by to promote his upcoming comedy “The Night Before” (read Drew's review here). The actor's off-the-cuff demeanor always makes him a slam-dunk guest on the show, and today he addressed such topics as the aftermath of last year's “Interview” controversy, his awkward run-in with Justin Bieber backstage at “Ellen” and the bizarre episode that went down in Michael Strahan's dressing room. Below are five highlights, with relevant sound clips from the appearance.
1. He got booked on “Ellen” during “Justin Bieber Week,” bringing him face-to-face with the singer he once publicly called “a piece of shit.”
“It was one of those things where I just started saying shit,” Rogen described of the “polite” encounter backstage, which Bieber instigated. “Like, shit just started coming out of my face. I don't even know what it was…I don't think I said — I don't know if I said I'm sorry. I don't even know if I was brave enough to acknowledge that I had said something.”
2. He called Sony's decision not to release “The Interview” in theaters “traumatic.”
“It was very traumatic…like you make these movies, and even if they're — you know, even if they do bad, or are reviewed badly, they're supposed to come out, you know?” he said. “And that's what was really weird, was like spending years working on something, making it, going through like 80 percent of the promotion process of going on talk shows…and then at the last second, it not happening.”
3. Jon Favreau once confronted him about a joke Rogen's character in “Funny People” made at his expense.
“There's a joke in 'Funny People' where I tell Jason Schwartzman, I'm like, 'He looks like Jackson Browne, I look like Jon Favreau.' And Jon Favreau came up to me and was like, 'It hurts…you're in a theater full of people, they all laugh, it sucks.”
Wonder if it went down anything like this.
4. He and his colleagues were kicked out of their cushy office on the Sony lot to make way for former Sony head Amy Pascal, who lost her job in the wake of Sony hack.
Rogen: “She told us she was going to. Before she got fired, she was like, 'If I'm ever not the head of the studio anymore, I'm gonna take this office.' We [just] didn't think that we would be the cause of it, and that it would happen so soon.”
Howard: “You can kinda tell how important you are in show business by which office you get. Like there are probably guys who are shitheads who get like a little tiny closet, right?”
Rogen: “Yes, and now that's what we're in, because we almost ruined the studio. [Laughs]”
5. “Live with Kelly and Michael” tried to kick him out of Michael Strahan's dressing room the last time he called in to the “Stern Show.”
After being given permission to use Strahan's dressing room prior to his appearance on the morning talker to promote “Steve Jobs,” his “Stern” chat was interrupted by increasingly-frantic sign telling him he needed to leave.
“First someone came in with a sign that said, you gotta get outta here. And I like waved them off and was like, fuck this,” Rogen recounted. “And then they left for a few minutes, and then they came back with a somehow more firmly written sign that was like, seriously, you have to get out of here…it was all capitalized with exclamation marks. And I still waved them off and I just wouldn't leave, basically.”
Rogen later added: It was super weird, if you ask me. It was not that big a deal. They made it a big deal, which I'm kinda glad they did cause it made [my 'Stern' appearance] funnier. …I think it was one of those things where the people at the Kelly and Michael show were worried that Michael would get mad at them for sticking me in his dressing room.”