Judd Apatow on ‘Euphoria’ and Becoming ‘Maude Apatow’s Dad’

When Maude Apatow was first cast as Lexi on season 1 of HBO’s Euphoria, she was widely known as “Judd Apatow’s daughter.” After the wildly popular and obsessed-over second season wrapped up last month, culminating with Lexi writing, directing and starring in the most expensive high school play of all time, Judd Apatow has officially become “Maude Apatow’s dad.”

“I went online and I looked at my Twitter feed and I saw that my name was trending and the first tweet was something like ‘Judd Apatow is Maude’s dad?!’” the legendary comedy director tells me in this preview from next week’s 150th episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “And then someone else was like, ‘Who the fuck is Judd Apatow?’ And then someone else was like, ‘He’s a director!’ And then that person said, ‘Well, I don’t know every nerdy indie director.’ And then someone else was like, ‘He’s not an indie director. He did Knocked Up!’”

Among the first tweets to go viral on the topic was one that read, “Wait I just found out that the actress that plays Lexie is a nepotism baby omg her mom is Leslie Mann and her dad is a movie director lol.”

Describing the situation as a “fight between people who knew who I was and a much larger amount of people who didn’t know who I was,” Apatow thought to himself, “Wow, I’m the first person trending because no one knows who I am. And I took a lot of pride in that.”

Turning slightly more serious, Apatow says that becoming “Maude Apatow’s dad” was “always the plan.”

“You’re supposed to surpass your parents,” he adds. “You want to be the better version. So that’s already happened and I’m very excited for her.”

Once Apatow, who gave Maude—and her sister Iris, who co-stars in his new Netflix movie The Bubble—her first acting role in 2007’s Knocked Up, starts actually talking about Euphoria and her performance on it, he instantly transforms into an embarrassingly proud parent. “I mean, the show is incredible,” he says. “And I sat and watched it in a puddle of tears. She works so hard on it, but you don’t really get a sense of what it’s going to be from how she talks about it when we see her. Because she just talks about the pressure of filming a scene and what she was trying to do and hoping it came across. And then you see it as a finished story and it’s so moving.”

Apatow also has high praise for the show’s controversial creator—and fellow “nepotism baby”— Sam Levinson. “I just thought what he did in terms of paying off all the storylines for the last two years was pretty remarkable,” he says. “And then I just feel bad about myself that I‘m not a better director. Like, am I supposed to move the camera like that? Because I don’t know how to do that!”

“I just love the surreal nature of it and that it all became about grief and the trauma that had affected all of these kids and led to these different behaviors,” Apatow continues. “It was really powerful.”

And while Apatow jokingly expressed some “concerns” on his Instagram stories about Lexi’s budding romance with the sensitive but menacing drug dealer Fez, he has nothing but nice things to say about the actor who portrays him.

“They have such amazing chemistry together,” he says of Maude and Angus Cloud. “And they’re very close friends. So you really felt romance and she just did beautiful work. I was very proud of her.”

Subscribe to The Last Laugh podcast now to hear our full conversation with Judd Apatow about his new Netflix movie ‘The Bubble,’ upcoming George Carlin documentary and more when it drops next Tuesday, March 29th.

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