In an episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast, actor and producer Seth Rogen opened up about his position on negative film reviews and how the opinions of film critics can be hurtful and possibly debilitating for an actor’s career. Rogen has made and starred in a mix of critically acclaimed films, like The Fabelmans, and some bad movies throughout his career.
“I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things,” said Rogen. “It’s devastating. I know people who never recover from it honestly, years, decades of being hurt. It’s very personal… It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad. That’s something that people carry with them, literally, their entire lives and I get why. It f****ing sucks.”
Rogen continued on the topic of his 2011 film The Green Hornet, which was hit with a litany of negative reviews. He noted that the silver lining was the box office results for the film, which saw a $35 million opening.
“For Green Hornet, the reviews were coming out, and it was pretty bad,” Rogen said. “People just kind of hated it. It seemed like a thing people were taking joy in disliking a lot. [But it] was the biggest opening weekend I’d ever been associated with at that point. It did pretty well. That’s what’s nice sometimes. You can grasp for some sense of success at times.”