 Media Credit: Ryan Littman-Quinn and Michael Saldarriaga
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Towering in his little chair and playing with straw wrappers, Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer and star Jason Segel was cracking a joke at every chance he could get. The actor boldly said that he was "born without a sense of shame." For anyone who has been paying attention to the recent surge in the success of Judd Apatow comedies, Jason Segel's lack of shame is certainly paying off.
It all started in high school when Segel won a basketball state championship, and as he is 6-foot-4, this isn't the biggest surprise. Yet, due to excessive boredom in his art history class, Jason spent his time reading plays, which interested him so much that he asked to perform Edgar Ablee's The Zoo Story. After performing a 20-minute monologue, he was discovered, and he started to work on the television show Freaks and Geeks, where he met Judd Apatow.
After a career of ups and even more downs, Segel has finally been given the chance to write and star in his first feature film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. "I've been trying to be the star in a movie since my career started," Segel said. "You get slapped in the face at some point because it's not as easy as expected. I got very lucky very young, I met Judd Apatow when I was 18. I walked out of that thinking I was going to be a huge star."
Obviously, this wasn't the case, as Segel spent years nearly jobless. In response to this, Segel said "I needed to adjust my sense of time. I got the job on How I Met Your Mother because they loved Freaks and Geeks. That was eight years after the show ended." Now, Segel has made Forgetting Sarah Marshall, an "everyday Joe" type of comedy; his face (and some body organs) will soon be familiar when the film is released nationwide on Friday.
The film's tagline is true to form; it is "the ultimate romantic disaster movie." The film begins with television star Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) breaking up with her boyfriend, Peter Bretter (Jason Segel), for another man. In this scene, Peter is naked … completely naked. Segel's nudity adds an unusual comedic element to a film that is actually really funny. This part in the script was inspired by Segel's own experience. "I was once dumped while naked, and I thought it was hilarious while it was happening. I couldn't indicate it because I was really upset, but the whole time I was thinking, 'you're giving me comedy gold.'"
