Jason Segel made his name working in comedy—nine seasons on How I Met Your Mother, numerous big-screen collaborations with Judd Apatow's camp, rebooting the Muppets for a new generation of kids—but lately, the 37-year-old actor is interested in projects that tackle "the big questions," as he calls them. That's how he ended up following his acclaimed turn as David Foster Wallace in 2015's The End of the Tour with the lead role in The Discovery, the second full-length feature from Charlie McDowell, the director behind 2014's mind-bending marriage thriller The One I Love.
The Discovery depicts a world in crisis: A scientist (played by Robert Redford) has proved the existence of an afterlife, which spurs millions of people around the globe to commit suicide, just so they can cross over to the other side. This dystopian premise is the bleak backdrop for a romance between Segel's character and a woman who's fighting the urge to self-destruct, portrayed by Rooney Mara.
Describing the plot in any further detail would spoil the film, but suffice it to say, Segel's latest movie indeed deals with some big questions. It's a quiet film, one that tries to offset its melancholy with humor, and one that's draped in fog as it ponders what makes life worth living and what happens after we die. In the spirit of The Discovery, I recently tried to get some answers to these questions from Segel himself. Our discussion is below and has been edited and condensed for clarity.
VICE: Did working on The Discovery force you to re-examine your ideas about the afterlife?
Jason Segel: I think that one of the big problems with the world today is that we don't often acknowledge that any idea that we have about the afterlife is a guess. And anyone who proceeds with assuredness in their point of view, they're sort of missing the point that this is a mystery. That's the wonderful point of it—you're supposed to surrender to the mystery of it all, and the second you try to name it, you've really missed the beauty of it in a lot of ways. For me, what's cool about the movie is that it asks questions as opposed to giving answers, and to me the function of art is that you experience the piece and then you go and have a discussion. But I didn't go in with any particular belief about the afterlife. I think what's sort of hard about spirituality... David Foster Wallace put it best in "This Is Water" — the fish don't know what water is. And one of the things that's hard about spirituality is you want to look outside for it, but you're right in the middle of it, so it's very hard to see. You're in it right now.
What's interesting to me is that I don't even know if you can really describe the scenario the film puts forward as "an afterlife." It doesn't conform to the dichotomy of either being in paradise or being punished.
It's funny, because we've talked about the afterlife a bit in talking about this movie, and when you examine a lot of views of the afterlife, some of them feel like this duality of the best thing you can think of versus the worst thing you can think of. It's a little like a Warner Bros. cartoon: When the good guy dies, he floats up to Heaven and there's people playing harps, and all your loved ones are there, and there's a banquet of all his favorite foods, and the bad afterlife is hot pokers and you're burning in fire and all that. I think that as religion and science start to converge—which is what's happening now; there are semantic differences, but science is starting to talk about multiple dimensions just as religion always has—you start to wrap your head around more sophisticated versions of an afterlife, where maybe the worst thing isn't fire, maybe the worst thing is nothing.
What do you think happens after we die?
I think really the only thing that I've been able to deduce from my short time here is that there seems to be some value in being good to the people around you. And there seems to be a lot of relief found by living in the present. That's really as far as I'm able to go in terms of drawing conclusions.
Were you raised in a very religious household?
I was raised with a Jewish father and a Christian mother, going to Episcopalian school in the day and Hebrew school at night.
So you got a few different perspectives.
I did, and I was very interested in comparative religion when I was younger, and still am now, and I read a lot of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and all that sort of stuff, and it really seems like in the venn diagram of spirituality, being selfless and kind seem to be the ones that really emerge.
That sounds simple, but it seems to elude a lot of people.
Yeah, I think if you get too caught up in what God does and doesn't want you to eat, you're sort of missing the point, you know?
Did you take comfort in the idea of the afterlife in The Discovery?
I don't know that I took comfort in it. I really take a lot of satisfaction in making movies, or books, or being involved in art that broaches some of the big questions. That's been one of the things that has been really interesting to me over the past three years, when I took a minute—my TV show had ended, I had more time on my hands, and got to think about what I wanted to do, and realized I wasn't in my twenties anymore, and I wasn't scared of girls anymore. Making movies where that was the premise didn't really apply to what my life was like anymore, being a grown man. [ Laughs] I thought I should start making things I watch. And when I got this script, this was a movie that I would put on the moment that I saw it was available.
What would the worst-case scenario afterlife look like for you?
I actually oddly just did a movie about religion, about Hell—a movie about a real minister who started preaching that there was no Hell. It was a This American Life podcast, his name's Carlton Pearson. In that process, we talked to a lot of ministers about their visions of Hell, and the one that really hits me in a very visceral way is eternal separation from God.
I've heard it characterized that way, and I feel like that's the kind of frightening that sneaks up on you.
You know what the best comparison I can think of is? The day after a breakup— forever.
One of the themes in the film is this idea of getting a second chance. If there was one thing or moment in your life that you could change, do you know what that would be?
One of the things that I've learned as I've gotten older is that I am really happy with where I am right now. And any little change you make affects that—it took every mistake along the way to lead to now. I actually think there's a bit of hubris in wanting to change things, or in thinking you should change things. Wanting to change things is very normal and natural, of course, but in thinking that you should change something, it implies that you know better than whatever might be in play here, call it God or whatever you want. I've learned that some of the moments I thought were the worst moments in my life, have turned out to be fundamental anchor points in my life.
Because they're part of the foundation of who you are?
Yeah, and a lot of times they're the incentive for a pivot. The great successes and the great failures, they end up being pretty similar in retrospect.
If it turns out that there is a points system that factors into the afterlife, do you think that being a minister is going to help put you over the edge?
Well, I'm an internet minister—if anything, I think I get negative points for that. I just signed up and paid, like, 25 bucks.
The Discovery is currently streaming on Netflix.
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