Although Freaks & Geeks only got one season, its female protagonist was blessed with two love interests, thanks to a couple of talented young actors.
Jason Segel recently recalled the audition process for the Paul Feig-created NBC teen dramedy, which ran from 1999 to 2000 with EP Judd Apatow, featuring himself as aimless drummer Nick Andopolis, the eventual boyfriend of Linda Cardellini‘s overachiever Lindsay Weir.
“I was brought in for a callback with James Franco, and we were, as far as we knew, competing for the same part, because at the time, there was only one of those characters,” he told GQ. “Daniel and Nick were just one character at the time. So we went in and we auditioned against each other. They liked us both, and they split the part, and he became the cool one, and I became the goofy one.”
Segel added, “I always felt like Nick was a lot like me. He was a sweet guy who just couldn’t quite get it right.”
Franco was cast as the heartbreaking bad boy Daniel Desario, with Busy Philipps, Seth Rogen, John Francis Daley, Samm Levine and Martin Starr rounding out the cast of titular outsiders.
Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini and James Franco in Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) (NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Despite the show’s cancelation after one season, Freaks and Geeks has continued to gain fans over the past 25 years. But in 2017, Apatow explained why he’s not considering a reboot of the beloved series.
“I don’t want to do more Freaks and Geeks because we liked how it ended, so I feel it’s unwrapping something and seeing if you can not screw it up; I don’t think we would do that,” he explained. “Also, the world has changed so much. Back then in 1999, we were talking about the pre-computer and cellphone age that was before YouTube, Google, Snapchat. I don’t close the door on anything but my inclination is that we said all we had to say.”
