Seth Rogen on Working With an Emotional Steven Spielberg on THE FABELMANS: "I Saw Him Cry Dozens of Times"

The semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans is headed our way this Thanksgiving holiday, and it had its red carpet debut this past Sunday, with the movie’s director, co-writer, and biographical source, Steven Spielberg, in attendance. The film stars Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who play versions of his parents, while Gabriel LaBelle stars as Spielberg himself, but is named Sammy Fabelman in the film.

Seth Rogen also co-stars as a close friend of the family, and joked that when Spielberg first rang him up, he was “worried I was in trouble of some sort, that he was calling to yell at me for some joke I’d made.” When it became clear the call was actually for a part, Rogen said it was “a very surreal moment.”

He explained:

“I have friends who have worked with Steven Spielberg and it’s been surreal for everyone I know, but also, the added layer of it being such a deeply personal film, it was something that was not lost on anybody. There was a point that I went up to Michelle and was like, ‘You’ve worked with Scorsese, does this seem different than that?’ And she’s like, ‘Oh this is way different. This is a singular experience.’ Which I was glad she verified my feeling that that’s what was happening.”

Williams explained to THR that as the iconic director dug deep into his past for the story, every day of the production was very emotional, which Rogen also confirmed.

“He would cry a lot, openly. We’d show up on set and he would just see a certain piece of wardrobe or a certain piece of set dec[oration] or everyone coming together to recreate a certain thing. I saw him cry dozens of times throughout filming the movie which was actually very beautiful and I think made everyone want to really honor what he was doing. You saw how much it meant to him and how truthful he was being.”

Added LaBelle,

“Sometimes we’d all do a group hug afterward or at the end of the day. You could feel it, it’s a really personal project and it was really special for everybody to be a part of so everybody just understood. It was actually really comforting.”

Tony Kushner, Spielberg’s longtime collaborator, co-wrote the script with him, noting, “I’ve never had as much fun writing in my entire life. I usually don’t have a lot of fun writing.” The two worked on the film via Zoom during the pandemic in what started out as low-pressure fun. Kushner said he came up with the name “Fabelman” but told Spielberg he had to name his sisters and mother. Kushner explained the meaning behind the fictitious name, which he put a lot of thought into:

“Spielberg means play-mountain; ‘spieler’ is an actor in Yiddish, and a ‘spiel’ can be speech or can be a play. I’ve always thought how wild that this guy is this great once-in-a-century storyteller who would be called Spielberg, play-mountain. I wanted to have some of that meaning, and I’ve always liked the German word ‘fabel,’ which means fable. And because the movie is autobiographical for Steven but it isn’t an autobiography, it’s not a documentary, so there’s a fictional element as well. So I thought that ‘Fabelman’ was a nod to that.”

This movie looks like it’s going to be beautiful and heartbreaking. I love Steven Spielberg, and I can’t wait to see this opus he created.