After playing to packed showings all week in limited release, the biopic Steve Jobs gets a wide release on October 23. Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin played with the structure of Steve Jobs, and the theatrical setup has been praised and criticized by people who like that sort of thing and people who don't, respectively, as all the action is squished into the intense moments before three of Jobs' product launches.
One of the most emotionally charged scenes plays out between Jobs (Michael Fassbender) and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, played by Seth Rogen. When we called up Rogen to talk about the movie, he told us at first he didn't think he was right for the role. He was wrong.
Rogen explains why he was ultimately so sold on Steve Jobs, how he got to know Steve Wozniak (magic and couples on Segways are involved, so read on), and why he'll never be into Walk the Line.
GQ: How did you get involved with the film?
Seth Rogen: I got a call that they were making this movie, and that they were looking for an actor to play Steve Wozniak and that I could come in and audition with Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin. My first instinct was that I probably wouldn’t do it. I auditioned, and I really got along with Danny and Aaron, but then I didn’t hear anything for like six or seven months or something. And then I heard I got cast.
Why didn’t you think you’d do it?
The movie it was in my head is not the movie it ultimately was, and I should have given Aaron and Danny more credit. I kind pictured what most people pictured—the bad version of a Steve Jobs biopic. I just couldn’t imagine how I would fit into a movie like that. And honestly, I was skeptical I would be wanted. Then when I read it, it was so different. It wasn’t one of these saccharine, heavy, wrought-with-misery movies. It was a fast-paced, argumentative movie that actually felt very in line with things I had done before.
How much did you know about Steve Wozniak before you started?
Almost nothing. I’d seen him on that Kathy Griffin reality show. I can’t honestly tell you that I knew there was a cofounder of Apple. I think I thought it was just Steve Jobs.
Were you more anxious about Wozniak’s approval, or the audience's?
I think first and foremost I was anxious about Danny and Aaron’s approval. Honestly I didn’t even think about whether Wozniak would like it or approve of it. I met with him a bunch of times and I talked with him a lot, but in my head those were all tools to make Danny happy. Not tools to make Wozniak happy. Danny is my boss. I told Danny I’d picked up on some little things Woz does, but I would’ve been totally happy doing absolutely nothing like Woz if that’s what Danny wanted.
What’s one Wozni-ism that you picked up?
He has a very specific way of hand-talking. Whenever he’s talking about a thing, you can tell he’s imagining building it. With his hands.
Wozniak has been played before; what did you know, starting out, that you wanted to do differently?
The role was written so differently than it was in the other version. The only other one I’ve seen was the Ashton Kutcher one, and I thought Josh Gad was really good [as Wozniak]. This one is quite argumentative and confrontational, and even though it’s in a nice Wozniak-an way, often times the scenes have an undertone of aggression to them.
There were some great Jobs burns in the film—which was your favorite?
He’s just consistently so condescending. He calls Woz “little buddy” and stuff like that. He refers to him as Rain Man off-camera at one point. There’s a part where I’m really mad at him and he tells me to have a mimosa. I think that’s one of the most condescending things you can say to somebody.
I’ll use that in my professional life.
Yeah, have a mimosa! It's the most dismissive thing you can say.
Were you a biopic person before Steve Jobs?
I wasn’t. I’ve noticed my instinct is actually to not watch biopics of people I’m interested in. I’m a huge Johnny Cash fan, for example. I know almost every word to every Johnny Cash song. And I love Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, but I had no interest in seeing Walk the Line. Maybe because I knew so much about him, he could not have seemed less interesting to me. I’m more interested in seeing these types of things about people I don’t know that much about. I just watched Love & Mercy, and I’m a huge Beach Boys fan but I knew very little about Brian Wilson. It’s an unconventional biopic and I really liked it. It was very impressionistic, and there are massive gaps, but I feel like I got a lot of insight into Brian Wilson's psyche.
I get that. But I stand behind Walk the Line.
I hear it’s very good!
It is! One last thing; Wozniak also said you attended a magic show together in Los Angeles. I need to know everything about that day.
It’s called the Magic Castle. It’s a club for musicians in Los Angeles. It’s very old, and it’s hard to get into. Like you need to know or be a magician to get in. And me and my wife went with Wozniak and his wife, and we were there for, like, seven hours. It was truly a marathon hang session. I assume when someone is playing you in a movie there’s probably a certain spiel they want you to have, but fortunately I hung out with him for four hours beyond that spiel.
And at the end of the night—there’s valet parking there, and my wife and I were like, We’ll walk you to the valet. And Wozniak and his wife are like Oh, actually we rode Segways here. And leaned up against the corner of the parking lot were two Segways. He and his wife got on them, and they don’t have headlights so he was literally holding a flashlight in one hand and operating a Segway in the other, and they just zipped off into the night.
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