Seth Rogen Explains How He Came Up With The Kelly Clarkson Line In ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ To… Kelly Clarkson

Kelly Clarkson won the first season of American Idol, recorded “Since U Been Gone” (a perfect song), and hosts a successful talk show. But to millions, she’ll forever be most associated with Steve Carell having his chest waxed — and Seth Rogen is to blame.

“I want to know if it’s true… it’s your fault that people scream my name everywhere I go,” she told guest Seth Rogen during Tuesday’s episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, referring to the iconic line from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. “I could literally do anything in the world, doesn’t matter how many hits, [or] what I do in life, I could save a family from drowning, fires… and literally the one thing people know me from is ‘ahh, Kelly Clarkson!'” After apologizing, Rogen explained where “ahh, Kelly Clarkson!” came from.

“We knew Carrell was going to be waxed and he wouldn’t be able to think clearly probably, so we wanted to just be able to feed him things to say,” he said. “We don’t always like to have profanities. Judd was like, ‘You should write a list of jokes that are dirty jokes and a list of clean jokes.’ And it was hard to write the clean jokes” (Apatow previously shared the full list of clean and dirty joke ideas, including “trash heart” and “burger panties”). Rogen “honestly” thinks that he was “sitting on my couch writing the jokes and you came on television. I saw you and it was Kelly Clarkson!”

You can watch the interview above.

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