Seth Rogen Once Auditioned to Play a ‘Boy With a Cognitive Disability’ and Says It Went ‘So Bad’ It ‘Would End My Career’ if the Tape Leaked: ‘If You Have It, Burn It’

Seth Rogen recently quipped on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that he might lose his acting career if his early aughts audition for Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez’s “Gigli” was ever to be made public. “The Studio” star and creator was asked by Kimmel if he still has to audition for parts, which prompted Rogen to walk down bad memory lane.

“It has been a long time,” Rogen said. “And thank god it was mostly physical VHS tapes and stuff like that that was being used when I was auditioning for things, because the things I auditioned for, in retrospect, if they were out there in the world, they would end my career very, very fast, I believe.”

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Rogen “auditioned for this boy with a cognitive disability” in “Gigli,” a role that would ultimately go to Justin Bartha. “And I don’t think the script was written in what, by today’s standards, would be the most sensitive portrayal of a boy with a cognitive disability.”

“I don’t think I wore a helmet in to the audition itself, but it was at play,” Rogen said. “And I’m tempted to do an impression of what I did, but I can’t even do it. I can’t. That’s how bad it was. It’s so bad. I dare not even portray what I did in this audition. Because I went for it. I saw myself at the Oscars… Truthfully, if that tape was out [in] the world today, this would be the last interview you ever saw me do. Other than, like, my apology tour. Please, if you have it, burn it. Please sell it to me. I will buy it.”

“Gigli,” directed by “Beverly Hills Cop” and “Midnight Run” filmmaker Martin Brest, stars Ben Affleck as a low-ranking mobster who is tasked with kidnapping the younger brother of a federal prosecutor. The brother has an intellectual disability. Rogen was coming off short-lived TV comedies such as “Freaks & Geeks” and “Undeclared” at the time of his “Gigli” audition. The movie was an infamous box office flop, grossing just $7.2 million worldwide.

“The truth about that movie and what it taught me was how much everything around a movie sort of dictates the way people see it,” Affleck told Entertainment Weekly in 2022, noting the film remains one of his most well-known disasters because of all the tabloid fodder that surrounded him and Lopez’s romantic relationship at the time.

“It’s just that it became a story in and of itself. The funny name, the Jennifer Lopez romance and overexposure of that, it was kind of a perfect storm,” Affleck said. “And I remember talking to [the director] the Friday it came out and I was like it’s just spectacular, it’s a tsunami, it couldn’t be worse. This is as bad as it gets.”

Watch Rogen’s full recent interview with Kimmel in the video below.

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