From a park bench in La Cañada where this interview is taking place, near the set of a “weed/action comedy” he’s co-written and is co-starring in called , Seth Rogen has caught sight of a three-wheeled stroller with a strapped-in toddler as it flips over on a short but steep grassy incline. Suddenly there’s crying, a father quick to comfort his shaken-up son and, from Rogen, instantaneous laughter. Hollywood’s newly anointed comedy star is no chortling wallflower either.
When his great deep musical growl of a voice revs up, it can suggest both kingly merriment and the stuff of storybook nightmares. “That’s terrible,” he says, covering his mouth and shaking his head in shame (but still chuckling). “That’s why I would be a bad father.
” Rogen makes sure to let on, though, why this accidental kiddie tumble was particularly amusing: the dad. “He laughed for a split second before he went to pick the kid up.” A big-but-not-seam-splitting presence in bushy hair and black-rimmed specs, Rogen, who turned 25 in April, has a bearish affability in person that seems ideally suited to humor both gonzo and vulnerable.
“Good comedy doesn’t have to be a comedy idea,” says Rogen, who uses the two white-hot-buzz movies he’s got out this summer — the Judd Apatow–directed relationship flick and , a beer/bongs/babes high-school freakout Rogen co-wrote — as examples.
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