Judd Apatow on Hiring His Own Kids for Knocked Up:

“It was definitely my choice [to put them in the film]. I just thought that whenever you see kids in movies they always feel scripted and stiff. And if I had my kids there with us, they would act like normal children and do things that kids don’t do because my kids do all sorts of weird things. They’re really funny and then they’re pissed off, and then they’re suddenly happy again and there’s violent mood swings all day long. There’s a potential for violence and then they just kiss you hard. I thought if I could capture any bit of that, it would show people what being a parent is actually about.

I was nervous about [using them] because I thought if this doesn’t go well it could be a disaster. ‘I’ve already ended their acting careers.’ I said, ‘Your acting career ends Friday at six o’clock.’ But, you know, I thought it could really be a disaster if they refused to do it. They could show up at work and say, ‘I want to go home…’ and then I’m a lunatic if I don’t let them.”

Apatow concedes that it helps that mom [Leslie Mann] is on the set too. “Yeah, she’s acting with her mom and I’m right there. If her mom goes, ‘What do you want for breakfast?’ and she just answers and forgets the cameras are there, you really see the kind of conversations that they have. It’s funny and sweet and very weird at times. And they’ve gotten good at improvising, which is somewhat shocking. Or I can feed them lines and they will repeat them. I said to Iris, it’s true, I said, ‘After Seth walks away, turn to Paul Rudd and say he looks like Winnie the Pooh.’ She just turned and went, ‘He looks like Winnie the Pooh,’ without missing a beat.

Maude went on a rant yesterday in a scene how she thinks babies are born. I said, ‘Say whatever you want, Maude.’ And she went into this really long, bizarre explanation about storks have these eggs that are invisible and they go through your head and they go into your stomach and you push your bellybutton and your butt falls off and it falls out your butt. It goes in the dirt and you dig it out and you hit it with a hammer and then [there’s a] little tiny bird baby and it’s already wearing clothes. She was just going and going.”

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