Seth Rogen joins Aziz Ansari's directorial debut Being Mortal
Just two buddies, hanging out with Bill Murray and thinking about aging and death
Seth Rogen is gearing up to—as we all must, some day—contemplate a Seth Rogen-free universe, as Deadline reports that the American Pickle star has signed on for a role in his buddy Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut, Being Mortal.
Said film is being adapted from Atul Gawande’s non-fiction book of the same name, in which the American surgeon muses on a wide variety of factors related to aging and death. Which sounds like a real laugh riot, especially when you’ve got Aziz and Seth yucking it up about assisted living, or dementia, or just the inevitable yawning chasm that will one day consume us all, rendering everything we do meaningless in any sense beyond the strictly transitory.
Bill Murray will also be there.
This will be the first major collaboration between Rogen and the noted NFT entrepreneur, which is kind of surprising, in that they’ve both operated in similar niches during their careers, offering up two different takes on the “smartass who is, deep down, a good guy” motif.
This is Ansari’s first feature film as a director, although he’s previously directed a number of episodes of his Netflix series Master Of None. (Including all five episodes of the show’s third season, during which Lena Waithe took over as the series’ star.) It’s not clear what sort of structure he’s going to impose on Gawande’s book, which isn’t, by all accounts, an especially narrative experience, despite featuring a number of anecdotes re: croaking. Ansari will also star in the film, which he wrote.
Rogen’s having a busy year of his own; he recently starred in Hulu’s Pam & Tommy as the guy who steals Pamela Anderson’s sex tape and broadcasts it to the world; he’s also lined up his first feature with Steven Spielberg, having been cast in a role in the director’s upcoming semi-autobiographical feature The Fabelmans.