“I modelled the movie off of Broadcast News” –… | Little White Lies

I mod­elled the movie off of Broad­cast News” – Jason Segel on For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall at 15

18 Apr 2023

Words by Simon Bland

Two people wearing brightly coloured clothing against a pale background.
Two people wearing brightly coloured clothing against a pale background.
Writer and star Jason Segel spills on the naked real-life inspi­ra­tions and upcom­ing small-screen future of his heart­break-based mod­ern com­e­dy classic.

There are few things in life that leave you feel­ing more vul­ner­a­ble than being dumped. Actu­al­ly, scratch that; being dumped while you’re stark bol­lock naked prob­a­bly leaves you feel­ing a tad more vul­ner­a­ble — and that’s exact­ly what hap­pened to Jason Segel. Released 15 years ago, For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall has emerged as one of the fun­ni­est and most quotable break-up movies. Part­ly inspired by a real-life inci­dent where Segel was dumped ful­ly nude, it man­ages to walk that tricky tightrope of being fun­ny while also offer­ing moments of gen­uine heart­break. Accord­ing to its writer and star, this deep well of youth­ful vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is where its roots tru­ly lie.

I can hon­est­ly say that at the age I was when I wrote that movie, 24 or 25 years old, get­ting over a bad break-up was the most vital, vis­cer­al and real pain I had expe­ri­enced,” Segel tells us. It was the biggest thing I’d gone through at that age and I think watch­ing some­body scram­ble through new emo­tions in their life is what makes it fun­ny. That’s what rela­tion­ships are,” he rea­sons, a series of fail­ures until you find the one that works — but that first one just feels monumental.”

This recipe of real pain and goofy humour is a thread con­nect­ing much of Segel’s fil­mog­ra­phy lead­ing all the way to his recent mid-life cri­sis series Shrink­ing. How­ev­er, it can all be traced back to his first film. Released in 2008, For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall sees him play Peter, a song­writer work­ing on a pup­pet vam­pire musi­cal who finds him­self uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped by Kris­ten Bell’s epony­mous Sarah Mar­shall. Retreat­ing to Hawaii to stem the weep­ing and attempt to move on, he meets Mila Kunis’ resort recep­tion­ist Rachel before a new prob­lem emerges. Turns out, Peter’s new ex is stay­ing at his hotel with her per­ma­nent­ly-aroused new boyfriend, pop singer Aldous Rain, played by Rus­sell Brand in the role that made him a state­side star.

After we made Knocked Up, Judd Apa­tow, in an amaz­ing stroke of intern­ship, came to me and said I can get movies made now. You’re next up at bat. Got any ideas?’” says Segel, remem­ber­ing how his old Freaks and Geeks pro­duc­er helped get his first film made. I’d been out­lin­ing this idea of some­body going through a break­down in the hap­pi­est place on Earth and hav­ing to fake hap­pi­ness in front of their ex. I basi­cal­ly pitched it to him and with­in a day or two he said, Alright. Write it.’ It’s nice when some­one tells you what to do,” he smiles. I had the naivety and exu­ber­ance of youth and I was hun­gry. I rent­ed a house in Hawaii and wrote it pret­ty quickly.”

Hav­ing Apa­tow in his cor­ner pro­vid­ed the guid­ance Segel need­ed while remain­ing flex­i­ble enough to wel­come unex­pect­ed changes in the name of com­e­dy. Judd’s biggest les­son was that you should write as good a script as you can write that, in the­o­ry, you could shoot as-is,” he explains. Then you cast the fun­ni­est peo­ple pos­si­ble and don’t wor­ry if they’re exact­ly right for the script as you con­ceived it; you rewrite and set the stage for each of your actors to kill. Rus­sell Brand is a real­ly great exam­ple of that because his part was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten to be a straight-loaded British author, like a Hugh Grant-type.”

He con­tin­ues, detail­ing how Brand’s over­ly-sex­u­alised, loose-lipped per­son­al­i­ty inspired the tight-pants-wear­ing lothario he ulti­mate­ly played. Rus­sell came in and was very much not that and very much some­thing entire­ly more spec­tac­u­lar. We did a full rewrite because it was very clear Oh, that’s the guy,” recalls Segel. Imag­ine hav­ing to get along with that guy dat­ing your ex-girl­friend in par­adise. It was bet­ter than what I pic­tured, so we hon­oured that.”

Two people, a man and a woman, engaged in conversation in a domestic setting.

With Brand, Bell and Kunis fill­ing out his leads, Segel bor­rowed from one of his favourite movies to give his com­e­dy a more real­is­tic and relat­able heart. Nobody’s a vil­lain. I stole that con­cept from Broad­cast News, which to me is a per­fect roman­tic com­e­dy. Just when you think some­one has proven them­selves to be great, they make a mis­take and just when you think some­one has proven them­selves to be not wor­thy, they do some­thing noble — and that’s life,” he sug­gests. Nobody is any one thing. I mod­elled the movie off Broad­cast News in that way.”

Join­ing Peter on his heart­break hol­i­day are an array of faces famil­iar to the Apa­tow-verse, from Jon­ah Hill’s Aldous Rain fan­boy wait­er to Paul Rudd’s beach-bum surf instruc­tor. Togeth­er with Brand, Bell and Kunis, these quip-heavy tal­ents give For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall a mor­eish unpre­dictable qual­i­ty. Rudd and I have a spe­cial thing. I can’t quite put my fin­ger on it but we’re just sim­i­lar enough to share a sense of humour and just dif­fer­ent enough to cre­ate the ten­sion need­ed for com­e­dy. There was some­thing about those days that felt a lit­tle bit like floating.”

That said, keep­ing track of the ad-libs proved tricky at times: The din­ner scene [between Peter, Rachel, Sarah and Aldous] was the cra­zi­est to shoot because you had four peo­ple at the table then Jon­ah all impro­vis­ing. Keep­ing track of every­body and try­ing not to laugh… it was a real­ly fun, con­fus­ing night that I’d like to repli­cate over and over. It was dreamy,” smiles Segel. It was a bunch of young actors at a Hawai­ian hotel, not real­ly under­stand­ing what mak­ing a movie was. We had the naïveté of youth and had a great time.”

Coun­ter­bal­anc­ing the com­e­dy was Peter’s very real pain which the char­ac­ter fun­nelled into a Drac­u­la pup­pet musi­cal, some­thing Segel had actu­al­ly been work­ing on in real life. Appar­ent­ly, he had a cou­ple of hero songs” pre-writ­ten but decid­ed to go for the jugu­lar with the one that ful­ly embod­ied Peter’s anguish. I chose the real­ly sad one to play at the bar scene, Dracula’s Lament. The final, big musi­cal num­ber is a mix of that and a bunch of orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al writ­ten by a guy called Peter Salett, who did an amaz­ing job.”

How­ev­er, when it came to lit­er­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, Peter’s mul­ti­ple full-frontal nude scenes took cen­tre stage: It was real­ly scary at first. I had to have a lit­tle bit of liq­uid courage,” admits Segel. The first time I came out and did the scene, when we fin­ished, every­body behind the mon­i­tors applaud­ed and it made me feel real­ly safe. There was a sense that it was kind of elec­tric,” he remem­bers. Nobody had done any­thing like it before; it was super weird and vul­ner­a­ble. When we start­ed to get loose, we added things like me turn­ing around and bend­ing over so you lit­er­al­ly see up my butt,” he laughs. We were real­ly going for it.”

Still, there were some lines they couldn’t cross: There are some very spe­cif­ic and very fun­ny rules about the amount or lack of arousal that you can have on a male body for it to be rat­ed R,” he chuck­les. Peo­ple are nor­mal­ly naked for sex­u­al pur­pos­es and I think see­ing some­one naked for humil­i­a­tion pur­pos­es was a new frontier.”

With so much of his own life expe­ri­ence fuelling its cre­ation, see­ing For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shal realised and wel­comed as a hit was not only ther­a­peu­tic for Segel but much like Peter’s the-one-before-the-one love jour­ney, a kind of rite of pas­sage’ in itself. When you’re a young artist try­ing to make it, there’s an ener­gy that’s a real­ly pow­er­ful moti­va­tor. You might call I’ll show em’. When I con­ceived and wrote it, peo­ple were like You’re not actu­al­ly going to end a roman­tic stu­dio com­e­dy with a lav­ish Drac­u­la pup­pet musi­cal. That’s crazy.’ and I’d say Yes, I am. You’ll see.’ There was a moment where I saw the movie and it worked and it real­ly scratched my I’ll show em’ itch.”

Despite this ear­ly sense of achieve­ment, Segel reveals that a sequel series is on the way: I wrote a spir­i­tu­al sis­ter to For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall that I think I’m going to adapt as a TV show,” he con­firms. Full frontal nudi­ty was the most vul­ner­a­ble thing I was capa­ble of at age 25 and it was very lit­er­al. As you get old­er, you realise there are even deep­er forms of naked­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that are emo­tion­al­ly raw. If there’s any evo­lu­tion, it’d be towards some­body access­ing those same feel­ings from the per­spec­tive of some­one who’s been through a lit­tle more life.”

In the mean­time, the film remains a mean­ing­ful high-point for both Segel and the view­ers who embraced it. I hear a lot that peo­ple have watched it and it’s helped them make it through a break-up, which is a real­ly cool thing,” he smiles. I very rarely have some­thing go as well as For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall did.”

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.