Not every actor enjoys playing multiple roles at a time, but often they do so anyway, especially in comedies. They tend to be fairly similar in character, however, that wasn’t the case for Seth Rogen in An American Pickle.
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Initially, he wasn’t thrilled to play both roles, even trying to “get out of it,” as he told Seth Meyers during an interview.
“It’s not something I went into lightly, and I actually tried to get out of it several times. We actually did a table read where Ike Barinholtz read the Herschel role at one point, and he was hilarious. And I remember thinking like, ‘Oh, we got like – we don’t need me.’”
Of course, the role wasn’t changed and luckily, Rogen did come around and played both Herschel and Ben. It was quite the task, though, as the film had the Sausage Party creator play a pickle-brined human being for the entire film and then go back to play a clean-shaven Brooklyn man.
An American Pickle is currently available to stream on HBO Max.