Jason Segel

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jason Segel starred in Freaks and Geeks, How I Met Your Mother, Knocked Up. But he's also an accomplished writer and creator. He wrote the classic romcom Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and revived The Muppets for a new generation.When Jesse talked to Segel in 2020, Jason had just created the weird and wonderful TV drama Dispatches from Elsewhere - a show he says put him "out of his comfort zone." He'll talk about that, and what makes the Dracula song in Forgetting Sarah Marshall... unforgettable. You can catch him on the Apple TV+ show Shrinking, where he stars opposite Harrison Ford.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:23.0	It's Bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:25.8	When you see Jason Segal on screen,
0:29.8	usually plays more or less the same type of guy.
0:34.8	Somebody's best friend, maybe a down-on-his-luck leading man.
0:39.3	Usually these characters are a little cornally sincere, but very endearing.
0:43.0	He got to start on screen in his late teens.
0:48.6	He starred alongside James Franco and Seth Rogen on the short-lived cult TV show Freaks and Geeks.
0:54.9	Jason played Nick Endopoulos, a charming slacker from a Michigan suburb with dreams of becoming a rock star.
1:02.3	From there, a bunch of other roles, How I Met Your Mother, I Love You Man, knocked up, just to name a handful.
1:08.7	He's also a brilliantly talented writer. He wrote and revived The Muppets for a new generation.
1:11.8	His first writing gig was the feature film Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
1:13.9	He also starred in that film.
1:15.4	It's sort of a romantic comedy.
1:17.2	In it, he played a struggling musician
1:18.8	named Peter Brether.
1:21.2	The movie starts with a breakup
1:22.4	and ends with a musical about Dracula.
1:26.6	And if I see Van Helsing, I swear to the Lord, I will slay him.
1:32.3	Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, he take you from me, but I swear I won't let it be so.
1:37.9	These days, you can catch Jason Siegel on Shrinking.
1:41.3	It's a comedy in which he plays a therapist who, while grieving the death of his wife,
	...

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