Seth Rogen at work with an excited Steven Spielberg in THE FABELMANS: “I’ve seen him cry dozens of times”

The semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans is headed for us during the Thanksgiving holiday, and premiered on the red carpet last Sunday, with the film’s director, co-writer and biographical source, Steven Spielberg, waiting. The film is the protagonist Michelle Williams And Paolo Danowho interpret the versions of his parents, while Gabriel La Belle he plays Spielberg himself, but in the film his name is Sammy Fabelman.

Seth Rogen he is also co-starring as a close friend of the family and joked that when Spielberg first phoned him, he was “worried that I was in some kind of trouble, that he was calling me to yell at me for a joke. that I had done. “When it became clear that the call was actually for a part, Rogen said it was” a very surreal moment. “

He explained:

“I have friends who worked with Steven Spielberg and it was surreal to everyone I know, but also the fact that it was such a deeply personal film was something that was not lost on anyone. There was a moment when I went to Michelle’s and I thought, “You worked with Scorsese, does it seem different to you?” And she’s like, ‘Oh, this is very different. This is a singular experience. ‘ Which I was happy that he verified my feeling that this was what was going on.

Williams explained to THR that while the iconic director dug deep into his past for the story, each day of the production was very emotional, which Rogen also confirmed.

“He was crying a lot, openly. We showed up on the set and he only saw a certain wardrobe item or a certain piece of dec set[oration] or everyone gets together to recreate a certain thing. I saw him cry dozens of times during the filming of the film, which was really very cool and I think it made everyone want to really honor what he was doing. You saw how much it meant to him and how sincere he was.

Added LaBelle,

“Sometimes we all hugged after or at the end of the day. You can feel it, it’s a very personal project and it was really special for everyone to be a part of it, so everyone understood. It was actually really comforting ”.

Tony Kushner, Spielberg’s longtime collaborator, co-wrote the script with him, noting, “I have never had so much fun writing in my entire life. Usually I don’t have much fun writing ”. The two worked on the film via Zoom during the pandemic in what started out as low-pressure fun. Kushner said he came up with the name “Fabelman”, but told Spielberg that he had to name his sisters and his mother. Kushner explained the meaning behind the fictitious name, which he thought a lot about:

“Spielberg means playing mountain; ‘spieler’ is an actor in Yiddish and a ‘spiel’ can be a speech or it can be a play. I’ve always thought about how wild it is that this guy is this great storyteller of one time in a century who would be called Spielberg, play-mountain. I wanted to have some of that meaning and I always liked the German word “fabel”, which means fairytale. And since the film is autobiographical to Steven but not an autobiography, it is not a documentary, so there is also an element of fantasy. So I thought ‘Fabelman’ was a nod to that. “

It looks like this movie is going to be beautiful and heartbreaking. I love Steven Spielberg and can’t wait to see this work he created.