A new movie is starring Seth Rogen and… Seth Rogen.
His characters learn family legacies can be complicated, and with enough brine, you can get yourself into a real pickle.
Seth Rogen (as Ben): “I have Kombucha.”
Seth Rogen (as Herschel): “Kombucha?”
Seth Rogen is seeing double in the new HBO Max comedy, “An American Pickle.”
Seth Rogen: “The themes in the movie about how we just are kind of inseparable from our ancestors, um, even if we would like to think we’ve broken out from underneath them, um, that made me think that maybe playing both roles would actually serve the story.”
First, Rogen plays Herschel Greenbaum, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe.
Then he plays his own great-grandson, Ben.
Seth Rogen (as Herschel): “Is this your father?
Seth Rogen (as Ben): “No, that’s David Bowie.”
The movie is about the elder Herschel waking up in present-day Brooklyn after being preserved in a barrel of pickle brine for a hundred years. Hey, it happens!
He finds out everyone he knew is gone, and the only surviving relative is his great-grandson, who takes him in.
Both are the same age, but couldn’t be more different.
Seth Rogen: “I think that’s something that I really relate to because my grandparents, like, were tough people who tolerated me at best when I was a kid, and so I can only imagine if we were the same age, they probably just wouldn’t have liked me very much.”
Seth knows about impressing the fam.
His grandparents did get to see him become a successful actor, but they were more impressed with his closet full of paper towels.
Seth Rogen: “That to them was like the highest achievement that I ever made in my entire life because they grew up in the Depression, and they had very little. Being in movies was less impressive to them (laughs).”
Seth Rogen (as Herschel): “I have an idea, let’s start pickle business.”
Seth Rogen (as Ben): “That’s a very stupid idea.”
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