An American Pickle is available to stream now on HBO Max. The film is based on Simon Rich’s New Yorker novella and stars Seth Rogen as Herschel Greenbaum, a struggling laborer who immigrates to America in 1920 with dreams of building a better life for his beloved family. While working at his factory job, he falls into a vat of pickles and is brined for 100 years. The brine manages to preserve him perfectly. When he emerges, he seeks out his family and is troubled to learn that his only surviving relative is his great grandson, Ben Greenbaum (also played by Rogen).
Molly Evensen stars as Clara, who becomes one of Herschel’s interns in the present day and helps him manage his pickle company. Molly talked EXCLUSIVELY with HollywoodLife about teaming up and working alongside one of the comedy’s biggest stars. “I think Seth is pretty genius. I also love that he approaches things from an actor’s perspective and also a business perspective,” she told HollywoodLife. “Getting to watch and observe how he handled himself on set was such a blessing because this is my first big feature.”
She said that learning from him was an “invaluable” experience. “In acting class, you’re taught about listening and listening to your scene partner. I just very specifically remember doing a scene with him and realizing like, oh, this is what listening is supposed to feel like. That’s what it is to have like an actual engaged scene partner. I think a lot of things clicked for me in that moment, so that’s definitely one of my biggest takeaways was finally experiencing that. The listening was huge.”
There was some improv that went down after a few takes. “It was interesting to see how that worked,” Molly said. “He would do everything by the book for several takes, and then he would tell continuity, I’m going to change things up, which I thought that was so great. It’s so nice to tell continuity that I’m going to change things so they’re not over there pulling their hair out.”
An American Pickle also stars Sarah Snook, Jorma Taccone, and Eliot Glazer. The film was directed by Brandon Trost.