Jason Segel remembers ‘life-changing’ advice from Judd Apatow early in his career

Although it was canceled after just one season, the NBC teen comedy-drama Freaks and nerds helped launch the careers of many of its young stars, and made executive producer Judd Apatow a major player in Hollywood. And now, 25 years later, Jason Segel still remembers the “life-changing” advice he once received from Apatow.

Segel, who currently stars in the Apple TV+ series Shrinkrecalled his mentor’s advice during a conversation with Today host Willie Geist on Sunday morning.

“He gave me great advice. That’s where Judd took me and a few others aside and said, ‘Listen, if you can improve the way you improve on this show, you can write. You just have to learn how to have to do, so I’m going to teach you how to do it,” the 44-year-old explained. “And it was a bit of an apprenticeship, where we literally learned how to write a script.”

“And then his parting words to me were, ‘Listen, Jace, you’re a weird guy. The only way you’re going to make it is if you write your own stuff,'” he continued. ‘And he was right: it changed my life. I wrote Forgot Sarah Marshall for example, a year later.”

Segel also opened up about his theory on why so many of the series’ actors went on to do big things, including not only himself, but Seth Rogen, James Franco, Linda Cardellini, Busy Philipps, John Francis Daley and Martin Starr. And it all comes down to an apparent vendetta.

“So this is what I think happened. Freaks and nerds got canceled, we did another show called Not indicatedsimilar cast.” he shared. “And I believe Judd continued as a… Monte Cristo-esque revenge mission to show that Hollywood was wrong and that these kids could act well.

‘So he started systematically putting us in films. He put Seth in it The 40 year old Virgoand then Seth did it Whipped as the lead, and he positioned the rest of us as friends,” Segel recalled. ‘And after that Whipped he took me to a Lakers game and said, “I think you’re up to bat.” Do you have any ideas?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I just started writing this thing called Forgot Sarah Marshall.”

“And I presented the idea to him at a Lakers game and the next day contracts actually came in and they said, ‘Go write the script and we’ll film it next year,’” he said. “So I filmed that during the first intermission of How I met your mother.”

Looking back, Segel is still amazed that Apatow was willing to take such a big risk on a 25-year-old. “Yes, I was a young guy. But we had the naivety of youth,” he added.