Seth Rogen Thought Steven Spielberg Was Mad At Him When He Was Cast In The Fabelmans

This post contains spoilers for "The Fabelmans."

If you've seen "The Fabelmans" — and more people should ("West Side Story" too) — then you'll know that Seth Rogen's character has an awkward relationship with Steven Spielberg's young fictional alter ego, Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle). Uncle Bennie, as he's known (despite them not really being related), is the best friend of Sammy's father, Burt (Paul Dano). He's a surrogate uncle to Sammy, but when he comes between Burt and Sammy's mother, Mitzi (Michelle Williams), Sammy is understandably resentful.

As a comedian, Rogen has likewise earned some resentment from people he's made jokes about, and he initially thought Spielberg might be one of them when the director first approached him about playing Uncle Bennie in "The Fabelmans." In a 2023 appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," Rogen told the host how he feared the worst with Spielberg due to his own history of offhand remarks:

"I got a call one day, that Steven Spielberg wanted to talk to me. I assumed it was bad, I don't know why. I was a little nervous. As I'm sure you relate to this, we make a lot of jokes out here. And I make jokes about people that I forget I make. And I've had famous people come up to me and be like, 'Hey man, f*** you,' and I genuinely have no idea what they're talking about. And I have to like google like 'Seth Rogen Pete Davidson joke.' Like, what? And then I'm like, 'Oh, I did say something one time.' Like, it's happened to me so many times, that I assumed that I'd made some joke and I was going to get yelled at. And instead, it was like, 'No, I want you to play my uncle in this movie.' Which was much better."

This isn't the first time Seth Rogen has teased the possibility of some playful antagonism between him and Steven Spielberg. In an earlier appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" in 2018 (via HuffPost), Rogen told the story of how Spielberg came up to him at a party while he was smoking pot. "I just kept smoking it in Steven Spielberg's face," Rogen said, "as I saw, like, the look on his face where he's just like, 'I'm never working with this motherf***er ... ever.'"

This was before Spielberg cast Rogen in "The Fabelmans," so obviously, he wasn't put off by the incident too much. Then again, maybe it fed into the characterization of Uncle Bennie and Sammy Fabelman's strained relationship with him. In "The Fabelmans," when Sammy happens upon some incriminating background footage of Bennie and his mother on a camping trip, his world comes crashing down around him. After that, he becomes leery of Uncle Bennie and wants nothing to do with him or his ingratiating camera gifts.

Our review of "The Fabelmans" called it "one of Steven Spielberg's warmest, most autobiographical films," but Spielberg did — by way of revenge, perhaps — force Rogen to get an unflattering haircut for the movie, telling the actor (per Indiewire), "I want you to cut back your hairline so it looks like you're going much more bald than you are." This year, when asked which of Rogen's previous stoner movies he likes, Spielberg told Variety, "Having never been stoned, I don't see them as stoner movies."

"The Fabelmans" is now streaming on Showtime.