Dave Franco’s party animal on “The Studio” is ‘so far from reality’ for actor: ‘Maybe I’ll have one or two beers’

Warning: This article contains mild spoilers for season 1, episode 9 of The Studio, “CinemaCon.”

Key Points

• Dave Franco breaks down his scene-stealing turn as himself on episode 9 of The Studio.

• The actor explains that showrunners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg amplified his upbeat personality to bring some “toxic positivity.”

• The Neighbors star says he “doesn’t generally get very f—ed up” or “do literally anything” he does in the episode.

Dave Franco steals the show on the latest episode of The Studio — but he doesn’t actually party like the Continental Studios gang.

In episode 9 of the Hollywood satire series, “CinemaCon,” Matt Remick (Seth Rogen, who also co-created and co-directed the show) and his fellow Continental Studios executives head to Las Vegas to present their film slate to cinema exhibitors — only to discover that the studio is nearing a buyout from Amazon, and that the edibles they’ve been munching on at their pre-presentation party have way more mushrooms than they thought.

As Matt’s crew tries to prepare Zoë Kravitz for her big moment on stage and struggles to locate their missing boss Griffin (Bryan Cranston), they keep crossing paths with Franco, who’s the only Continental presenter who’s happy to be baked out of his gourd. The Disaster Artist star plays a ridiculously giddy party animal who’s been feasting on the same edibles — but although he’s technically playing himself, the actor says he doesn’t actually have much in common with his fictionalized counterpart.

Franco discussed his quick but impactful guest appearance in the comedy show in a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, explaining that the real Dave Franco isn’t even close to the loose cannon that The Studio might lead you to believe.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you first get involved in The Studio? Did you know what your role was going to entail before you came aboard?

DAVE FRANCO: I actually didn’t. I got a text from [series co-creator and director] Evan Goldberg one day saying that they were making this new show and that they had a part for me, and I said, “I’m there. I don’t even need to know what it is. Count me in.” And it was a nice surprise when I found out that I was going to be in this fake Ron Howard movie opposite Anthony Mackie playing this New York gangster. And the rest is history.

What was it like playing yourself? Do you approach that character like you would with any fictional role, or do you feel like you have more leeway to just wing it because you automatically have some ownership of the character?

Yeah, it’s a good question. I feel like I have slightly more leeway because no matter what I do, it’s like: this is me, and I could kind of do whatever I want. Especially when I’m playing me on multiple drugs — it feels like the sky is the limit and I can go as crazy as I want. And when you’re playing yourself, you obviously want to have fun and not play a literal version of yourself. You want to maybe amplify certain parts of your personality.

I think Seth and Evan tapped into the fact that I am generally a very happy, positive person, and they took that to a pretty toxic degree — a kind of toxic positivity. They thought there would be a lot of humor to mine from the fact that everyone else in the episode is extremely stressed out by their accidental high, and inserting an extremely positive Dave Franco into that mix would annoy everyone who is trying to keep it all together.

Was there anything about The Studio‘s version of Dave Franco you felt was too different from your actual personality to include, or did you embrace all the significant deviations?

I was embracing it all. I don’t think there was anything where I was like, “I would never do that or say that.” I think that’s part of the fun of it is again, playing a version of yourself that is so far from reality that it just gives you a lot of leeway to have fun and be as insane as possible. And I’m someone who doesn’t generally get very f—ed up ever, or go to Vegas very much, or do literally anything that I’m doing in this episode. And so that’s the fun of it all: trying things that I don’t generally do.

Have you ever been in a situation that even remotely resembles this — getting too high or drunk before a professional obligation?

Not one that immediately comes to mind. Gosh, the closest thing that comes to mind is there’s been times where I’m supposed to be very drunk in a scene, and maybe I’ll have one or two beers just to start revving the engine and getting my head in the right space. But that’s a pretty boring answer to this question — going hard on two beers before a scene every once in a while.

To me, the funniest moment that you have in this show is the bit where you recount Bryan Cranston’s character doing something bizarre with nacho cheese, and there’s an inarticulateness to it that makes it feel more off-the-cuff than other parts of the show. How scripted was that moment?

It was mostly on the page, and then after we did a handful of takes, I just remember Evan Goldberg coming up to me and saying, “Stretch it out. Really milk this moment, because everyone else in the scene is so frantic and trying to figure out what’s going on. And the longer you make it last, the more infuriating it’ll be.” So that allowed me to have fun and improvise a little bit.

Every scene in The Studio is filmed, or at least presented, as one continuous take. How many takes did your scenes require?

The nacho cheese one was roughly 10 to 12 takes. But the longer takes, like for example when Zoë Kravitz realizes that she’s eating mushroom chocolates, that was probably 16 to 20 takes, which for me was very exhausting because my energy is so high that I had to bring that for 16 to 20 takes. And I actually remember Evan Goldberg coming up to me after take two and telling me to calm down because we were going to do many, many more takes and I needed to conserve my energy a bit.

But it’s a really fun way to work as an actor because you have that many takes to really hone your performance and take risks and try things in the earlier takes and find these really fun moments. So by the time you get to those later takes, you feel like you’ve worked through it all and you’ve homed in on something really solid.

The Studio‘s season finale streams on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, May 21. Episodes 1-9 are now available on Apple TV+.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

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