Seth Rogen has admitted directing Martin Scorsese in The Studio was the "worst thing in the world".
The actor stars in and directs the Apple TV Plus series in which he plays the head of a movie studio and it's featured cameos from industry titans including Goodfellas director Scorsese, Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie, Zoe Kravitz, Olivia Wilde and Zac Efron - and Rogen has now admitted he was "nervous" working with big name stars on his project.
In an interview with Jason Segel for Variety, Rogen explained: " I’d say half of them [the cameos] were people I didn’t know at all. We wanted people you haven’t seen us with before.
"Martin Scorsese, we just sent it to his manager. I’d met Zoe Kravitz once or twice. I met a lot of these people in passing. I’m sure you have at a party."
When asked if he was "intimidated" to direct people like Scorsese, Rogen replied: "It was the worst thing in the whole world. We were shooting the show in such a specific way that I was so nervous it would be creatively rejected. "
In the show, his character Matt Remick is often desperate for directors and actors to like him and worries about making them angry - and Rogen admits he's a lot like Matt in many ways.
He added: "The character is me in many, many ways. And the crux of the character is that he doesn’t want to let down his idols.
"And that’s one of the biggest things that I’m navigating: Whenever I get anyone to come do a thing we’re doing, I’m so aware of how upset I’ll be if they think it’s bad. "
Segel went on to add of Scorsese: "I did meet Martin Scorsese once. I met him at the Golden Globes, and we peed next to each other at the urinals. But I had the kids’ one and he had the tall one. So everything about it was just way off. That’s a great memory."
Rogen the added: "He’s a little guy."
Rogen previously admitted he's had plenty of pushback from industry pals after he used their real life experiences as inspiration for The Studio.
He told Vanity Fair magazine: "I think more [often] people have not wanted to accept that we have based things off of them, rather than claiming that we have based things off of them.
"If anything, people are like: 'That’s not me though.' But I think in general they really see that it comes from a place of love."
