Seth Rogen: Some Jokes in ‘Superbad’ Were ‘Blatantly Homophobic’

Seth Rogen confronted some of the controversial jokes made in his 2007 film “Superbad,” saying some of the riffs in the movie border “on blatantly homophobic.”

“It’s funny looking at some movies we’ve made in the last 10 years under the lenses of new eras, new social consciousness. There’s for sure some stuff in our earlier movies — and even in our more recent movies — where even like a year later you’re like ‘Eh, maybe that wasn’t the greatest idea,'” Rogen said in an interview with the Guardian to promote his new film “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.”

He noted that while some jokes are seemingly appropriate at the time, they can take on a completely different life down the line.

“There are probably some jokes in ‘Superbad’ that are bordering on blatantly homophobic at times,” Rogen continued. “They’re all in the voice of high school kids, who do speak like that, but I think we’d also be silly not to acknowledge that we also were, to some degree, glamorizing that type of language in a lot of ways.”

While “Neighbors 2” includes visuals that could be considered boundary-pushing, including a scene where women in bikinis are hosed down sitting on cars, Rogen said they attempted to use the film to address larger issues.

“The Greek system seems a little sexist,” he said. “The sheer fact that the women and the men don’t have equal rights and opportunities I think by definition makes it sexist, so that’s something we talked a lot about while we were making the movie.”

Rogen stars in “Neigbors 2: Sorority Rising” alongside Zac Efron and Chloe Grace Moretz. The movie will hit theaters on May 20.