Seth Rogen told the world this week that backstage at Saturday Night Live he finally had a smackdown with the NBC executive who cancelled Freaks and Geeks, calling him out for not understanding the show and wanting the characters to have “a victory” because “he went to a private school and was very rich as a child.” Well, today, the NBC executive told his side of the story, and it sounds as if Rogen might have been exaggerating just a tad. Garth Ancier thought the discussion with Rogen was just that: a discussion, not an argument. ” Just to clarify, Seth Rogen: I thought we had a very nice chat about Freaks and Geeks on Saturday night. As I said, my only note to Judd Apatow over the entire series was that either the Freaks and/or the Geeks should win the occasional victory over the cooler kids — especially since Judd Apatow has taken that note in every hit movie since,” Ancier wrote on his Facebook page. He also disputes the idea that he was a rich kid, something that Rogen had really taken him to task for. “OK, this is getting pretty funny. Now I’m the rich kid who went to private school so couldn’t understand that public high school kids who are Freaks and/or Geeks never have any victories over the cool kids. Yes, I went to private school (Lawrenceville), but my parents were not rich (very supportive, but not rich), and finally – THIS IS TV! The ultimate realm of wish-fulfillment!”
As for the decision to cancel the show: “I absolutely hated canceling this particular show. It was clear from the very beginning that Freaks and Geeks had great writing from Judd and Paul Feig, and a tremendous cast. This was an awful decision that has haunted me forever. But the show was consistently NBC’s least-viewed. For what it is worth, I have watched all of the episodes over and over again on Netflix, and asked myself what I could have done better to save it.” Every story has two sides. Go and see Gone Girl if you don’t believe me. While backstage at SNL, Ancier posted on Facebook that he was “still taking some mild abuse for canceling Freaks and Geeks 14 years ago,” which doesn’t really sound like the full-blown argument Rogen hinted at. We’ll just have to wait for witness Paul Rudd to come forward with the truth of what really happened at Cancelmania 2014
