NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - Judd Apatow on building a comedy empire

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

In this episode of "The Drink," NBC News anchor Kate Snow sits down with acclaimed director, producer, and writer Judd Apatow to talk about his new book, "Comedy Nerd." Known for films such as "Anchorman," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," and "Knocked Up," Apatow reflects on his career so far — from his early obsession with comedy and his difficult start in Hollywood, to learning from rejection and creating some of the most influential comedies of the past two decades."The Drink" is Kate Snow’s interview series featuring candid conversations with actors, authors, athletes, and visionaries — all over the beverage of their choice.Watch every episode of "The Drink" now at NBCNEWS.COM/THEDRINK. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, it's Kate Snow. I'm so excited for our latest episode of The Drink, my series all about how folks got to the top of their field. I had the chance to sit down with director, writer, and producer Jud Appetow. He's best known for films like Knocked Up, 40-year-old virgin, bridesmaids, anchorman. There's really too many to list. We talked over two hot pink cosmos at the restaurant La Mani near Rockefeller Plaza, discussing everything from his early obsession with comedy, writing letters and collecting autographs from comedians as a kid, to interviewing Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno for his high school radio show. He also opens up about breaking into Hollywood, pushing through rejection, and creating some of the most quoted

and beloved comedies of our time. Plus, he gives us a peek at what's coming next. As always, you can watch all of our episodes online too at NBCNews.com slash the drink. Hello. Fancy. This is a fancy drink. Right. This is real sex in the city. Cosmo.

I hate that it has the name Cosmo and people call it like a sex in the city drink. Why can't this be a man's drink? It is right now. But is this ironic for you or this is real? You really like a Cosmo? I do. I like any. drink that just is like fruity. I'm a fruity guy. Okay. And if it's, you know, if it reminds me

of being like a child and having orange soda. Right. But you get drunk with it, that's, that's the way I do it. We're in Lamani. Yes. Cheers to that. Cheers to Lamani. I'll be back later. Yeah. The food is delicious here. Greek food. Really good. Judd Apatow. Yes. You are writer, producer, director. You have a new book called comedy. nerd. Okay. 40-year-old virgin, just to name a few, knocked up. Anchorman, one of our favorites. I'm a virgin. I'm pregnant? With emotion? With a baby. Good evening. I'm Ron Burgundy. There's too many to list, and this book, this book is heavy. It's like almost 600 pages. I like to make things a little too long. That's just part of my whole thing. Books, movies, just a little bit more. And you know,

You know, the extra is free. I love it. Listen, if I open to one page in here, we could do the entire drink about this page, bridesmaids. Right? I'd randomly open to bridesmaids. Sure. Okay.

Every single page in here is something about your life and there's pictures. It's like a yearbook of your life. Because if I wanted to write a memoir, normally would have to be all words. Yeah. But if you could make it a lot pictures, you can write less. So that's how I decided. Okay. But there's a lot of words in here, too.

Yeah, there are a lot of words, but it's, so it's a memoir in scrapbook for it. What comes through is how many people you know, famous comedians all through your life. Yeah. And people you still are friends with to this day. Yeah, sometimes I think I just made movies and TV so that comedians would talk to me. You know, like I had to create credibility to get in the gang, but it wasn't really about making it, it was just like to be accepted. All the proceeds from comedy nerd are going to charity. Yeah, all the money that I make in the book, I give two charities to fire aid, which helps people

who are affected by the fires now to Dina and the Pacific Palisades, and to 826, which is a group that does free tutoring and literacy programs. So the beginning of the book is about you're writing letters to famous comedians, asking you're asking for autographs. You're just like, you're scrappy. You're just doing anything you can to meet comedians. No, I, you know, my grandfather was a jazz producer. His name was Bobby Shad. And he did Charlie Parker and Disney Gillespie and made music. Like a big music label. Yeah, I did Dinah Washington and ran jazz for Emmercy Records in the 50s and produced the first Janice Joplin album. Wow. So he was a hustler and was also in our family considered like a really cool guy. Yeah. And I think that was my first, you know,

connection to trying to do something creative. And he was friends with this comedian named Tody Fields. And Tody Fields was, you know, of that like Joan Rivers School of Self-deprecating comedy. And we would go see her when I was a kid and she was a family friend. And I think somewhere in my head, I thought, oh, that's the coolest person in the world. Did you think comedy is the coolest thing to do? Or like, why comedy? I think, you know, part of it was there was no religion in my house. We never, not in a negative or positive way, just no one mentioned it. Like it was never mentioned, ever. But you're raised Jewish, right? But it's just not really a thing. We just didn't do anything. And we didn't say we don't want to or we want to. It's literally just the absence of the

discussion. And so I probably started listening to people like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and watching Saturday Night Live to get a sense of how the world works and to get philosophies and these people were breaking everything down and what does this mean and what's unfair? And and what's ridiculous. Yeah. And so I became really obsessed as a little kid about it. Yeah, with coming. And then slowly thought, oh, I wonder if there's something I could do.

By high school, you're at a radio station at your high school, right? And you're asking comedians to come in to do interviews with you. Like big comedians, like Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah. Well, I would go to their houses usually, like with a big tape recorder from the AV squad. Like a big boom box? Yeah. I interviewed Steve Allen.

And you can see in the photo. this gigantic boom box. It was just so unprofessional. When did they think when you walked in, like did they expect the high school kid? I think they just, I probably looked like a pleasant, cute kid.

I wasn't 15, 16 years old. And I had a Long Island accent and talk like this. You know, how do you write jokes? And so they tolerated me. And people were generally very, very nice to me. Yeah. It's like I'm generous. Sit with people like Paul Riser.

You know, just ask. how do you get in? How do you act? How do you do it? Are you basically using those interviews to learn how to get into the business and how to be a comedian? Yeah, I think on some level, I just wanted to touch it. I just wanted to know it was real. It was almost like I was trying to invent the podcast. Way back then. Because there were no long interviews with people. I guess it was like whatever, the Playboy magazine, Q&A. But there weren't like hour long interviews that you could watch with Jay Leno or John Candy or somebody like that. Would you distribute them beyond your high school, though?

I barely distributed it at the high school. I mean, I don't think I even aired most of them. It was just an excuse to force people to sit with me. Wait, you still have all these pictures. Do you still have those tapes? Yeah, yeah, I have all the tapes. Of course you do. And I put out a bunch of books called Sick in the Head.

Yes. That had the transcripts. Yeah, and then I did new ones with people like Chris Rock and John Stewart and Amy Schumer. Those are great books, too, for people who don't know. Okay, so that's high school. Then when do you start doing, like, when do you think, I know I'm going to go up on stage and do stand-up? I was always afraid to tell anyone. So when I interviewed people, I never said, I want to do it.

Although they probably knew. I'm sure they do. It was so weird to not. And in my senior year of high school, I worked up the courage to get up on stage at Chuckles Comedy Club in Miniola. Long Island, New York. Yeah, Joe Bolster brought me on stage. and, you know, it did not go well, but I just loved it. And all the comedians had told me it wouldn't go well.

So I'm like, this went perfectly. They said I would bomb, and I did. You say in the book that they told, that everybody told you would take like seven years to break out. Yeah. So what I did badly, I thought, well, this is supposed to take seven years. And it, like, set a clock in my mind of like, oh, this is a very slow methodical process of figuring out who I am on stage and how I write jokes and perform.

That's interesting, though. if you hadn't heard that, you might have given up. Absolutely. And all the communities told me about the times that they bombed. So when I bombed, I thought, I'm in the club. I'm doing the thing I was supposed to be doing. Yeah. You were saying, before we started rolling tape, you were saying you wanted to be in the club.

Yeah. And what's the club? What was your vision of what life would look like? I think, you know, because we would see the cast of Saturday Night Live back then, and that looked like a group of friends. Yeah. And Monty Python looked like a group of friends. and Second City TV looked like a group of friends.

So I must have just thought, wow, it would be so great to be part of something like that. And I think eventually, you know, with our movies for a few years, we had, you know, a bunch of people that worked together a lot. You know, starting with the Freaks and Geeks group. Right. You're talking like Jason Siegel. Yeah, and Seth and Linda and Busy and Martin and, you know, John and Sam and, you know, it was all the people that, you know, that we wanted to work with over and over again. And then, you know, there were the people that I worked with, you know, before that,

like Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey. Yeah. You know. Yeah, let me go through a little of that because this is your life for a little Cosmo. Yes. Okay. One more Cosmo sip. Hmm.

It is really good. You get it. I get it. Okay. So you do some stand-up. You move to L.A. Yeah. You go to film school for a bit.

Yep. You drop out of film school eventually. Yeah, run out of cash. Run out of cash. Six grand. I needed six grand. And your family just didn't have that. We're like, yeah, we don't have six grand right now.

But that turned out to be the best thing because it just forced me to figure it out. To hustle again. Yeah, I mean, I went to USC cinema school and I did learn a lot about screenwriting. Sure. And when I started writing, I'm like, oh, I know stuff. I know how to write. I didn't think I learned anything and then I realized I did learn. Do you, at some point in your head, do you say, well, maybe I'm not going to be the stand-up

guy I'm going to be the writer for the people that are up on stage in the movies. I mean, I was doing stand-up, but I didn't have a lot to say. I was, you know, 20 years old. And so I had no theories. I wasn't so weird that I was like a, you know, a unique comedian. I was just like a solid lesson, kind of funny, smart kid. But it wasn't magic. And then I would go to the clubs and Jim Carrey would be in the club and Ellen.

And, you know, you'd see, you know, Sandler work on his act. And people were really good. And as a fan, I'm like, oh, I'm not doing that. You end up a roommate with Adam Sandler. Before he's on SNL, you guys are in L.A. And would you look at him and think, like, yeah, he's. Yeah, we all did. He was one of the people of a very few where people thought, oh, he's the next guy.

He's going to be Bill Murray or Eddie Murphy. And then one day he said, I have an audition for Saturday Night Live. And then he came home and he said, I got. He got it, and then he left, and I'm in the apartment, and he left all his clothes. He didn't even think his wallet. Like he was coming back. I don't know what he was thinking. He just left all his clothes and his wallet and his ID.

His driver's license. I still have all of it. There's a picture of it. Like, I don't know what he was thinking. Like, he literally didn't even take his driver's license. And you still have it. That's kind of weird. That's a hoarder.

How do you start writing? How do you get into, well, it was it just like I need to make money, and so I'm going to start writing now? Well, there was just rent, right? So rent was $425, so I just had to find a way to make $425. People would pay you whatever, $50 a joke. And then slowly, you know, people who were really successful started asking me to write jokes for them, like Roseanne and Tom. Right. Roseanne Barr. Then I started really writing for Roseanne for like a year. I worked with her on one of her specials. And that was a giant leap because she paid me real money. Oh, yeah. And suddenly I could valet park, you know. Also Gary Shanling, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so I wrote the Grammys with him one year. And Bob Dylan played and Nicholson was there and Bono. And I had never seen anything like it. And he was the funniest. And then he became my mentor. It's amazing. I mean, it seems like you've just built, from the beginning, you built a network of people that you could lean on and call and get advice from. And then that leads to work and writing. And by your late 20s, I mean, you're off. You're working. I'm trying to think of what can. came next. Oh, the Ben Stiller show. Ben Stiller's show. Yeah. So Ben and I had met and somehow it came up that HBO was looking for a sketch show. And we said, oh, we should kick that around. And we met the next day and we thought of an idea. Then we pitched it. And they bought it. We did 13 episodes and were canceled. But then six months later, we won the Emmy for Best Writing. This becomes a bit of, there's a bit of a theme in your life, I think, of having shows and then they're canceled, right? Freaks and Geeks. People know that one. And

it was canceled. Undeclared was canceled. It took a long time for me to get one that wasn't canceled. But freaks and geeks now, people watch it. Like, people in their 20s are watching it now streaming. Yeah, it's always out there. My kids watched it. Like, and they're 20-something. I know. People watch it like it just came out, which is just because it, you know, it just looks right. The vibe is right. It's ageless in a way. It's hard to be writing and watching all your friends around you. A lot of them are very successful. How do you keep going? Well, I just couldn't believe anyone let me do anything. So I never felt like anything was going badly.

I mean, you know, I would suffer. We would make things that we loved. And if they weren't successful, you were confused. You would think, am I crazy? Am I wrong? Have I lost my sense of it? In the moment. In the moment.

It's kind of brutal. And that would happen. You know, Freaks and Geeks gets canceled. And Declared gets canceled. We did a movie called Heavyweights, about a summer camp for overweight kids that didn't do well. but it's on Disney Plus. Now, people watch it like it came out two weeks ago and love it. Is it just your personality, Judd, that gets you to get back up and just do it again?

I think I always have a sense of, like, what's good and what's not good. So as long as I think it's good, I'm excited it got done, and then you just set it out into the world. And you go, I hope it has some sort of life. And it was frustrating to have so many things not break. through and become successful with the larger population. But in my head, I thought, well, I guess these are like independent bands. It's like putting out a replacements album. Because there were a lot of bands I liked that no one listened to. My husband's favorite band, but yeah. And so I thought, well, we're the replacements, you know, like we're kind of better than most people, but we don't

sell as many records. And that was my rationalization to keep my sanity. And then eventually things started breaking through. So it was also a good lesson to believe in what you do and have your own opinion about what you do. After the break, more from my conversation with Judd Apatow on how he finally broke into Hollywood and made the blockbuster comedies that put him on the map. Stay with us. Was Anchorman kind of a pivot point for you?

Like, it seems like Anchorman leads to a lot of things. Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. Cannonball! Anchorman was a big deal because we all thought that Will Ferrell was the fight. and Adam McKay and Will had written this amazing script, but nobody would make it for a long time. People just didn't know what it was, and we're like, I don't know, it's kind of like the jerk. What are you talking about?

Right, but it's an anchorman. Anchors aren't funny. Right? I'm an anchor. I'm not funny. People didn't believe it. We go on and watch all the anchorman from around the country, and so many of them are so fun. Oh, yeah.

Especially from the earlier era. And so no one would make their movie, and they brought me on as a producer, and they almost made it. And then they said, we're not going to make it. And then what happened was old school came out, which DreamWorks made. And then one day, Steven Spielberg said, what do we have with Will Ferrell? He's so great in our movie Old School. And they're like, we just got rid of Anchorman. And then he said, get it back.

So Steven Spielberg saves Anchorman. Yeah, it's all from him. Wow. Yeah. So does that then lead open doors for you to just keep making movies? Because it seems like after that you ever run. Yeah. As soon as Anchorman did well.

people were open to us doing other things. And also, maybe we should let them do some of their weird things. Yeah. I pitched the 40-year-old Virgin an idea that Steve Carell had as the next thing to do. When that did well, on the heels of it was Talladega Nights. Yes, I'm familiar. And I would be in the trailer producing, but also writing knocked up. You won't knocked up in a trailer.

In the Talladega Nights trailer. And then suddenly all these movies that we had written that no one wanted to make, people were like, oh, maybe we should make those. And so Seth and Evans movie, Superbad got greenlit and forgetting Sarah Marshall. And then suddenly people were like, what else do you have? Until we ran out. At some point, we're like, yeah, we ran out. Your comedy in that era is kind of like a raunchy comedy. Raunchy with hearts.

When you look back on it now, what do you think? I think we always found it funny when people were really immature. and needed some sort of a beating to grow up. So a lot of them are, in a way, coming-of-age movies. But as I get older, I realize that people are coming of age their entire life. And that's what we were talking about. It was just a lot of talented people doing amazing work together. You had the community that you'd been looking for as a kid.

Like all the friends and the people around you. Because a lot of it is just knowing who to hire. Yeah. It sounds like you're doing so much. Maybe your biggest, the biggest thing, You did, as you said, that person should be the director. And I just produced well because I didn't screw up, like, the biggest choice. I mean, I think you're selling yourself short a little bit, but I think you had something

to do with all the success in these movies. When you're in it, I know you've talked about this. You've had some panic attacks and things along the way. Oh, I used to have terrible panic attacks. Because when I used to punch up movies, which was very lucrative for a while to come in. Punch up means take the script, make it better. So, yeah, to make it better. Sometimes, like, you're structurally trying to fix it.

Sometimes you're just trying to make it funnier. But a lot of times you're the last person on board. Like something's been developed for years. And I would just, in my head, think, if this movie bombs, it's all my faults. Because I'm the last one to touch it. Yeah. You're not that way now, right? Like, it gets better.

Yeah, it does get better. Yeah, yeah. No, as soon as I understood what it was and someone explained it to me, it got better very quickly. You meet your wife? Cable Guy? Is that where you guys met? Leslie. Yes. And you guys have been married how long?

28 years. Cheers to that. That's a good, I mean, 28 years. Come on. And you guys have two daughters who are now actors on their own right. Yes. You had the girls were in your movies. They were knocked up, right?

Playing the daughters of your wife. Yes. Where do babies come from? Where do you think they come from? Well, I think a stork, he drops it down. And then a hole goes in your body, and there's blood everywhere coming out of your head. and then push your valley button

and then your butt falls off and then you hold your butt and you have to dig and you'll find a little baby. That's exactly right. Well, because I always thought like when you see movies and you see the kids of people,

they never look like the parents and they always talk to each other not in the way people talk to each other. So I just thought, oh, if I just put my kids in it, Leslie will talk to them the way she talks to them and they'll react the way they react and we'll get something very real and natural. And then it just happened to be that they were really funny in a way that was unexpected.

But they're your kids, Judge. Yeah. Of course they're funny. Then as they got older, they started to understand the craft of it. And, you know, they committed to really learning how to do it. But in the earliest times, it was just very instinctual. And I could just put two cameras on them and they would just have a fight. And I could just capture like a real fight.

And it would be funny. Your daughter, Maude, actually just directed for the first time. Did you give her advice? Did you have tips? Well, yeah, she directed her first movie called Poetic License. And I tried to give her advice, and she took a third of it, which I think is the right amount to take. From your dad.

Yeah, because you want to have your own vision and your own style. And, you know, I'm so, like, sweaty for the laugh. Like, I'll just, like, do anything to get the laugh. And, you know, she's like, Dad, everything doesn't have to be funny. Is it more of a drama, the movie? It is a human comedy. It's a really beautiful, funny movie. that stars as Leslie Mann and Andrew Barth Feldman and Cooper Hoffman.

It's really great. She did a fantastic job, but mostly because she ignored me, which is kind of amazing to watch because, you know, she's very, like, focused and she locks it down and she has a vision. And when I shoot, I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm going to just shoot everything and figure it out and post. You know, so she's very different than me, but made something really special. And it's a little bit of a movie about a empty nesting nervous breakdown.

Oh. And it's really funny. Is it about you? Is it about you and your wife? Well, it's like a love letter to Leslie in a way. It's about what we all go through when our kids are about to leave and how it kills us. You guys are an empty nest now, right? We are.

And we don't like it. We chase them down. Wherever they are, we go there. When we get toward the end of the book, it's a lot. a lot of documentaries. Yes. Is that your passion now? It's an additional passion because I think I was always like a historian of comedy in

addition to everything else. That's why I did the interview. So it's not just that I want to do it. I'm fascinated by the people who do it. And what do they learn over the course of everything? So I'm just finishing up a documentary I co-directed with Michael Bonfiglio about Mel Brooks. And it's called Mel Brooks, the 99-year-old man.

And so what's more fun than sitting with Melbrook's for 10 hours and just asking about his life and his journey when he's so funny and so sweet. What is next? Is there some, I don't know, crazy rom-com coming or anything? Well, I wrote a movie with Glenn Powell, a comedy that takes place in the world of country music. All right. And so that'll be the next movie movie. After the break, a rapid fire round with director, producer, and writer, Judd Apatow. us. All right. Can we do rapid fire?

Yes. Funniest line you ever wrote. It's tough because there's so many people involved. There's so much improvisation. There was a line that I just thought was a good line that I remember in the 40-year-old Virgin at the end of the movie when Catherine, Keener finds out he's a virgin, he says, I'm a virgin, I always have been. I like Godlach.

One good rule for making comedy. I always say try to write a really great drama and then add the jokes. Really? Like if it works as a dramatic story, then you find a way to make it funny. But you don't want to start with the funny, really. Quick answer on this one. Weirdest thing about you. I mean, the horning is pretty bad.

Like, I have it with, like, articles, like I'll go online and I'll forward articles to myself to read. I might have 100,000 articles in my text to myself. And it's a form of hoarding. I don't know why. It just makes me feel better. Like, well, maybe one day I'll be bored. I'll get the flu. I'll have time. I'll read this interview with Bono from 1994. If you weren't in comedy, what would you be doing? I probably would teach, I would assume. You mentor younger comedians now. You help people. Like the forward of your book is Lena Dunham saying what an awesome person you are helping. Yeah, I mean, I like working with people who are just getting started and saving them from all the pain and

struggles that I had as much as I can. On that note, what would be your best piece of advice to someone who wants to do what you do? I mean, it's just a lot of work, right? You have to really study it and have the courage to fail. I think people don't want to fail as much because people are exposed and they're on the internet or they're on social media. Yeah. But if you can find a way to be protected and just be a writer, be a comedian. or a director and, you know, have some years where you're experimenting before everyone sees it,

I think that's really helpful. Yeah. Judafto, this has been fantastic. Thank you. This is wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. So fun. Thanks, everyone for listening.

Hope you enjoyed it. This episode was produced by Zoe Baum, along with Kate Saunders. Our audio engineer is Matt Tierney. Geraldine Coles Asokar is our senior producer, and Erica Josephson is our executive. executive producer, Janelle Rodriguez is our executive vice president of programming at NBC News.