Seth Rogen clarifies comments about Emma Watson leaving the set of This Is The End

By Britt Hayes | March 30, 2021 | 4:34pm

Film Features Emma Watson

Seth Rogen clarifies comments about Emma Watson leaving the set of This Is The End

Photo: Rodin Eckenroth, WireImage

During a recent interview with British GQ, Seth Rogen was asked about an old rumor involving Emma Watson “storming off” the set of his apocalyptic comedy This Is The End. In a lengthy profile that covers everything from Rogen’s new book, Yearbook, to his various film and TV projects and his quarantine schedule, it was a little odd that the media’s biggest takeaway—particularly in an interview with a great Nic Cage story—was a sort of non-story about what happened (or didn’t happen) with Watson on a movie set almost 10 years ago. Rogen subsequently issued a statement to clarify his comments, noting that “Emma Watson did not ‘storm off the set’ and it’s shitty that the perception is that she did.”

In the hours following yesterday’s publication of the British GQ profile, numerous websites picked up on the Watson story. Many repeated the phrase “stormed off the set” in headlines, using quotation marks to suggest a direct quote from Rogen. Given that it’s become common for people to rely on secondhand news sources or to treat headlines as the factual distillation of a story, it’s easy to see how this got out of hand. But here’s where it started:

During the interview, the conversation turns to This Is The End, with Rogen sharing a hilarious Snoop Dogg anecdote, which the author uses to segue into the Emma Watson Thing:

As we’re on the subject of This Is The End, I mention a story I’d heard a rumour about but that he hasn’t included in the book, specifically that Emma Watson, who appears, like most people in the film, as a version of herself, stormed off the set after refusing to shoot one of the movie’s more out-there scenes, one that sees Danny McBride as a cannibal and Channing Tatum as his leather-thonged gimp on a leash.

Rogen’s response is presented in a way that seemingly confirms this narrative, though he never uses the phrase “stormed off the set”:

I mean, I don’t look back on that and think, ‘How dare she do that?’ You know? I think sometimes when you read something, when it comes to life it doesn’t seem to be what you thought it was. But it was not some terrible ending to our relationship. She came back the next day to say goodbye. She helped promote the film. No hard feelings and I couldn’t be happier with how the film turned out in the end.

The short version is that Emma Watson wasn’t cool with how the scene had changed between the script she read and what her co-stars were actually doing, so she decided not to participate. No big scandal here! Just Seth Rogen respecting an actor’s boundaries. THE NERVE.

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