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Credit: Universal Pictures
Knocked Up is considered one of the best movies of the 2000s, and I watched it multiple times when it first came out, relaying the story of career-minded Allison, who gets pregnant after a one-night stand. When I saw the title on the 2025 Netflix schedule, I decided to throw it on for the first time in well over a decade, and I’m shocked that nearly 20 years after it was first released, one side plot is as hilarious and relevant as ever.
The main story in Knocked Up revolves around Katherine Heigl’s Allison trying to make a relationship work with Ben (Seth Rogen) after they learn they’re going to have a baby. The Judd Apatow movie stars a good portion of the Freaks and Geeks cast as Ben’s stoner housemates, as well as Apatow’s wife and daughters — in other words, A+ casting. Still, the performance that stuck out to me after all this time was Ryan Seacrest playing an exaggerated version of himself.
Credit: Netflix
Allison is an up-and-comer at E! News, and she ends up being the crew member on the other end of Ryan Seacrest’s epic rant about the Hollywood celebrities who waste his time.
Upon being notified that Jessica Simpson is late for her interview, the host makes it clear that he doesn’t have time to wait on her, because he has to be at American Idol. Then he really gets going:
I don’t understand the young talent in this town. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve got four jobs. Hell, I’m more famous than half the people we talk to anyway. No one stands up, no one has the balls to sit them down and say, ‘Look, just cut the shit.’ But everybody works for them. They’re all on the payroll. They’re all sucking teat. Nobody sits them down eye-to-eye, one-on-one, and says, ‘Cut the shit.’ And all these stars just fuck it up. That’s what they do. They fuck my day up. And it pisses me off! And now I’m sweating.
Somebody get this man a cookie!
Jessica Simpson probably doesn’t deserve to be the poster child of the kind of celebrity Ryan Seacrest is complaining about here, but it’s so funny to me how much of the rest of it is still relevant. The man still has 97 jobs, and he’s definitely just as famous (if not more so) than anyone he shares airtime with.
In fact, now he’s the one getting interviewed a lot of the time, and the question he’s being asked is, “Do you sleep?” Wheel of Fortune contestant Jarri Machelle-Melton posed that query to him on the October 1 episode, TV Insider reports, to which Ryan Seacrest responded:
Jarri, I’m asleep right now. I sleep in my suit, in case I’m on call.
The best comedy has a certain percentage of truth to it, so it’s almost surprising to me that Ryan Seacrest would agree to a bit where he’s shading young Hollywood so hard and saying they “fuck his day up.” (Can you imagine him saying that to his Wheel of Fortune contestants?)
I’m so glad this Knocked Up side plot exists, though, and it was just one part of the Judd Apatow comedy that made it worth the rewatch. The 2007 classic is available to stream now with a Netflix subscription.
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