Seth Rogen’s The Studio makes Hollywood insiders of us all

By Esther Zuckerman

TV Review
The Studio
Apple TV+

FOR THOSE of us who spend our days thinking about movies (and the industry that makes them), there are plot lines in ’s new series The Studio that can feel a little too real.

Take for instance the pilot: Matt Remick, played by Seth Rogen, a co-creator of the show, is appointed the head of the fictional Continental Studios. Matt is a corporate stooge who thinks of himself as a guy who loves the art of film, so when his boss (Bryan Cranston) demands he make a movie about the Kool-Aid man, Matt goes ahead and tries to recruit Martin Scorsese (who actually cameos) to direct. The plan fails spectacularly.

Matt’s attempt to have it both ways is disastrously funny, thanks to highbrow gags about Scorsese’s work and the sheer fun of watching an anxious Rogen get humiliated. It’s also painfully real: Art dies in the face of commerce, in this fictional Hollywood as well as in the real one.

Rogen co-directed every episode with his longtime creative partner, Evan Goldberg; they and their fellow writers, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory, and Frida Perez, stylishly mine humor from the pain of the movie business. The question is: Will anyone outside the industry care? I’m biased, but I think so.

That’s because the creators have figured out a way to mix their satire with a snappy, broadly appealing energy centered around physical comedy and antic set pieces.

Yes, The Studio features a lot of in-the-know talk about the scoop-hungry Hollywood journalist , but it also has Rogen pratfalling, a ton of cursing and people getting way too high on mushrooms — you know, the kind of goofy stuff that’s been a staple of the star’s milieu for years.

As much as The Studio is about movies and the people who love and make them, it also understands that its medium is television. Unlike most shows these days, its structure is genuinely episodic. Each half-hour finds Matt getting himself into a new scrape, which keeps the action zipping right along and ensures no setup gets tired.

After pissing off Marty, Matt pivots to enraging director Sarah Polley (likewise playing herself) in the second episode, titled “The Oner.” Matt is on set to observe Polley direct what is supposed to be the bravura tracking shot at the end of her latest movie, which stars Greta Lee of Past Lives. Matt, a ball of nerves who mistakenly believes his filmmaking opinions matter, keeps messing everything up.

Cleverly, the entire episode is also shot in a “oner,” one continuous take executed beautifully by cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra. Newport-Berra’s work is key to the entire affair, giving it an intentionally retro ’70s vibe that evokes the days of Robert Evans even though the jokes are about artificial intelligence and Amazon takeovers. (The Studio wears its influences on its sleeve: Cranston’s chief executive officer, Griffin Mill, shares the same name as Tim Robbins’ character in Robert Altman’s The Player.)

Matt is surrounded by an eccentric group of fellow execs, including his bro-y buddy Sal (Ike Barinholtz), who only cares about the bottom line, and his acolyte Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), who wishes she were working at a cooler place, like A24. Catherine O’Hara, meanwhile, is a dizzy delight as the executive Matt replaced, now bitterly working as a producer, and Kathryn Hahn barrels into scenes in an array of tacky, animal-print clothing as marketing guru Maya. 

Pretty much every episode features at least one major guest turn from a star playing a version of him or herself. (When Rebecca Hall shows up and isn’t playing Rebecca Hall, it’s genuinely disorienting.) The famous people who’ve joined Rogen and Goldberg’s circus include Olivia Wilde, Zac Efron, Anthony Mackie, Dave Franco, Ice Cube, and Zoë Kravitz. Kravitz’s performance in the finale is arguably the most fun of the bunch — she really lets loose.

All these appearances could feel lazy on the part of The Studio — and occasionally I did get distracted trying to figure out how each person is connected to the actual Rogen — but they go a long way to rooting this fictionalized Hollywood in reality. That’s because the show also cleverly features filmmakers who aren’t as recognizable, like Owen Kline, who made the critically acclaimed but little seen indie Funny Pages. He plays himself, flummoxed by the crass questions of the profit-obsessed businessmen.

The Studio has its hangups. It has to walk a fine line between being too inside-baseball and just knowing enough, and as a result its dialogue can sometimes feel a little obvious to, well, people like me. The characters overly explain terms their real life counterparts wouldn’t have to describe. And Matt is a little too hangdog, a little too likable, a little too much of a Seth Rogen type to be fully believable as the kind of exec who would rise through the ranks in this town. Anytime Matt shows a hint of braggadocio, it inevitably fades in the face of a new crisis, as Rogen’s character has to fight to extricate himself from the situation with his dignity intact. (His dignity is rarely spared.)

Although Matt’s principles are thin and he’s quick to cave to the demands of the market, you ultimately root for him. He does seem to have a nostalgic notion of the magic of the movies, even as he’s selling his soul to make IP slop. A studio exec worth cheering for? Now that’s a fantasy. — Bloomberg