Seth Rogen Details His Awkward (and Hilarious) Nicolas Cage Meeting

Seth Rogen has an epic Nicolas Cage story that he broke out when he stopped by The Howard Stern Show on Monday. The actor (and now author) Rogen set the scene by explaining that the two men met in 2011 while casting was still going on for The Green Hornet, which starred Rogen.

Talks for Cage to join the production all started with a few phone calls. During one chat, Rogen recalled that Cage said he wanted his undisclosed character to be bald, with tattooed hair.

“And we were like, ‘OK …’ We were kind of wrapping our heads around it,” Rogen said, adding that a few days later, Cage called back said he didn’t actually want to do the tattooed hair in the movie because was thinking he might do it in real life. “And I remember laughing hysterically when he said it on the phone — and then stopped, realizing it wasn’t a joke.”

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Cage also wanted to play his character as a “white Bahamian man,” which Rogen said, “set off a lot of alarms,” but he agreed to discuss it at dinner with Cage and then-Sony chairwoman Amy Pascal at her home.

“And I remember going there with Evan [Goldberg] my partner and just being like, ‘I just don’t want him to do it in front of us. I’ll just be so uncomfortable.’ And I remember Evan being like, ‘He’s not going to do it. He’ll talk about it. He won’t launch into it. That would be too much.'”

Flash forward to Cage arriving at Pascal’s home. “And literally within 60 seconds, we were all seated at the house as he stands in front of us reciting a monologue, talking in a Jamaican accent,” Rogen recalled. “And we were just like, ‘It’s happening.'”

At that point in the story, Stern’s co-host Robin Quivers was in pure hysterics, laughing, as Rogen pushed on. “[His] monologue was not in the script. Nor did it have anything to do with the script. At which point I was like, ‘I don’t think he’s even read the script.'”

Cage finally concluded his speech to a stunned room, Rogen explaining, “It ends and, it is like he had just completed a backflip and he’s waiting for the applause. At which point everyone looks to me to express the group reaction. I was like, ‘It was OK. Cool. Thanks. We should talk about it. That’s not how we pictured the character.'”

The baffled and lackluster praise was not what Cage was expecting, and he “instantly fell” in his posture, Rogen said. “We all sit down for dinner and almost right away he just gets up and leaves,” he said.

Watch the entire segment below.