Seth Rogen admitted to having reservations about Jake Gyllenhaal's acting in the 2001 film "Donnie Darko," expressing doubt about how the performance would be received.
"I remember seeing [Jake Gyllenhaal] on set and being like, ‘I don’t know how this is going to land,’” Rogen said in an oral history of the film published by The New York Times. “He wasn’t playing this charming version of it.”
Rogen, who played the bully Ricky Danforth, shared that Gyllenhaal's approach to the character was not what he initially expected. However, Rogen later came to appreciate Gyllenhaal's nuanced performance.
“I remembered thinking he put a level of thought into this that I didn’t even realize, as an actor, was on the table,” Rogen said.
He also expressed uncertainty about the film's overall success during production. “I remember thinking, ‘This will either be really good, or it’ll be like the weird B-movie of itself,’” Rogen recalled.
"Donnie Darko" did not achieve immediate commercial success upon its initial release. However, it found a new audience after its release in the United Kingdom the following year and has since become a revered cult classic.
“If a thing is good and resonates, it will find its people. I think ‘Donnie Darko’ very much was that,” Rogen commented on the film's eventual legacy.
The 2001 film marked Rogen's first movie role when he was a teenager. He has previously joked that his first line in a film was, “I like your boobs.”
Reflecting on his early career, Rogen told Wired in 2022, “It was one of his first films, and I remember thinking, ‘This guy is going to be much more successful than me.’ And I was right.”