Judd Apatow On The End Of ‘Love’ And Why A ‘Freaks And Geeks’ Revival Is Unlikely

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https://uproxx.com/sepinwall/judd-ap...aks-and-geeks/

This is pie in the sky, but with all of these reboots and revivals being done now, if someone came to you and Paul [Feig] with an obscene amount of money and you were able to gather together enough of the actors, is that something you would ever be interested in revisiting?

I only think we would ever be interested in revisiting it because we had an idea that we thought was as strong as the original idea. I don’t think there is a number that would make us do it as a cash grab. But if Paul Feig woke up in the middle of night and said “I’ve figured it out,” then something like that becomes real. I don’t believe that has ever been his intention. We always felt like we ended on an oddly perfect, magical note. And most of the ideas that Paul wanted to express, he got to express. You know, we were compressed in Freaks and Geeks because we thought we were gonna get canceled at any moment. So we used most of our great ideas. The next phase of the show would’ve been all of the geeks suddenly being six feet tall and how that would change their relationships. And so it probably would’ve ruined the show anyways.

Finally, you went through this period where you were making shows and you didn’t know when they would be canceled. With several of your recent shows, even if the timing wasn’t always what you wanted it to be, you got to make a very definitive ending to them. How does it feel to have that ability now versus the scrambling you had to do back in the early ‘00s?

There’s nothing more heartbreaking than when a show ends without a thoughtful conclusion. I hate that Undeclared just suddenly stops and there’s no idea about where we leave them. With Freaks and Geeks, we shot the ending several episodes before the other episodes were shot because we were so nervous that they would suddenly cancel us and we wouldn’t have a final episode. So I’m much happier in a world where you’re collaborating with your studio and your streaming service, and you are talking about how you want to conclude a series. That’s much healthier to me. It shows a lot of respect for the audience and shows respect for the show itself, and the creators, to allow them to do that. There’s so many shows I’ve watched recently that suddenly end and I really find it heartbreaking. I’ll be following a show and after two seasons they’re just gone and you know they set up all these great ideas but they never got to follow through on them.

So we’re really happy that we were able to write this as a 36-episode story. That’s a lot of time to say a lot of things and we had the best time with such a great group of people. Everybody was fun and hilarious. It really was the perfect experience. And we’re all sad to not be together, to be doing it, but we feel really good about what we’ve done.