'I know people who have never recovered': Seth Rogen on the 'devastating' impact of bad reviews
Seth Rogen has admitted bad reviews of his work can be "devastating".
Seth Rogen finds bad reviews "devastating".
The 'Fabelmans' actor admitted it "f****** sucks" to have his movies publicly savaged by critics and claimed he has peers who have "never recovered" from facing harsh comments about their work.
Speaking on 'The Diary of a CEO' podcast, he said: "I think if most critics knew how much it hurts the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things.
"It's devastating. I know people who have never recovered from it honestly — a year, decades of being hurt by [reviews]
"It's very personal…. It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad, and that's something that people carry with them, literally their entire lives, and I get why. It f****** sucks."
The 40-year-old actor recalled the "pretty bad" reviews his 2011 movie 'The Green Hornet' - which also starred Cameron Diaz and Jay Chou - received, and though he felt people were "taking joy" in criticising the film, he did take some positives from the project.
He said: "For 'Green Hornet', the reviews were coming out and it was pretty bad. People hated it. People were taking joy in disliking it a lot.
"But it opened to like $35 million, which was the biggest opening weekend I'd ever been associated with at that point. It did pretty well. That's what is nice sometimes. You can grasp for some sense of success at times."
However, Seth felt the attacks on his and James Franco's 2014 comedy 'The Interview' were "more personal" because the critics had questioned their creative tastes.
He explained: "That felt far more personal. 'Green Hornet' felt like I had fallen victim to a big fancy thing. That was not so much a creative failure on our parts but a conceptual failure. 'The Interview', people treated us like we creatively failed and that sucked."
But the 'Sausage Party' star has found the best way to recover from negative reviews is just to keep working.
He said: "That's another funny thing about making movies … life goes on.
"You can be making another movie as your [current] movie is bombing, which is a funny thing. It's bittersweet. You know things will be okay. You're already working.
"If the fear is the movie bombs and you won't get hired again, well you don't have to worry about it. But it's an emotional conundrum at times."
