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

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.”

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.”