The Studio shines with a Golden Globe nomination after mocking them
Seth Rogen began to realize the enormous cultural impact of his Apple TV series “The Studio” when he started seeing memes of the Kool-Aid man every time a major IP movie was announced, while the cheerful mascot was parodied on his show. “A studio head told me today that when someone was pitching him the Labubu movie, he said, ‘All I imagined was you being made fun of,’” he revealed.
Rogen spoke after a screening of the Season 1 finale of “The Studio” at a special event in collaboration with Variety at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts Friday evening. It was just days after the Emmy-winning show repeated its comedy series win at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and just two days before it claimed a similar win at the Golden Globes. An entire episode of “The Studio” actually took place at the Golden Globes, so Rogen admitted that the three nominations were “surreal” since they were recognized “for mocking the Golden Globes.”
Rogen was joined by co-creator, co-director and writer Evan Goldberg and cast members Ike Barinholtz and Chase Sui Wonders for the wide-ranging conversation that had the packed house laughing and cheering throughout.
Before the finale screening, there was a reception and a screening of episode 9, in which the Continental Studios gang heads to Las Vegas for CinemaCon. And the night before, chaos ensues when Rogen’s fictional Hollywood exec Matt Remick throws a studio party. That episode was followed by a conversation with several below-the-line artisans from the series.
Adopting the city’s motto of “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” was something costume designer Kameron Lennox did not take lightly, especially when it came to Kathryn Hahn’s Maya Mason. “She’s already scandalous in the way she dresses. What would she do?” Lennox found a perfect camouflage outfit for her to add to the character’s “military vibe.” “I happened to come across this retro two-piece camouflage with mirrors everywhere, and I thought, ‘That’s Vegas in a nutshell.'”
Hair designer Vanessa Price was inspired by The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Jayne, which “popped into my head,” she revealed, adding that she had custom barrettes made for Maya’s hair that read “Kool-Aid” to tie in with the movie they were trying to sell to the public.
While Price and Lennox pulled out all the stops, makeup designer Jorjee Douglass kept it simple: “We kept her clean.”
Casting director Melissa Kostenbauder discussed the process of finding all the real cameos, from Dave Franco to Martin Scorsese and Zoe Kravitz, who all appear throughout. “That’s a real tribute to Seth, Evan, James Weaver and the people at Point Gray for establishing that reputation and that trust with the entertainment industry so that people were willing to come play.”
Editor Eric Kissack talked about live editing and described his job as “watching the scenes as they were shot and just starting to compress them.”
Watch the video above.
