Judd Apatow is in rare company as surely one of the few human beings to have ever shoved a bunch of poison ivy up their nose, thus leading to the development of whatever the hell “gigantor chickenpox” is.
During a recent interview with Seth Meyers on Late Night, the King of Staten Island director and Comedy Nerd author looked back on this perplexing act of nostril-focused fuckery, joking that it swiftly ended his would-be career as a child actor. Per Apatow, he had ambitions of maybe landing a McDonald’s commercial, perhaps more, when he was in “sixth or seventh grade,” even going so far as to get a professional headshot.
However, the excitement was short-lived.
“I instantly had this terrible thing happen where to make someone laugh—a group of friends, and girls—I shoved poison ivy up my nose,” Apatow said. “It seemed hilarious at the time, and then I kept putting calamine lotion [on it].”
Eventually, Apatow explained, this already harrowing state of extreme discomfort developed into something even worse.
“It turned into chickenpox,” he said. “So I had poison ivy and chickenpox at the same time, and the poison ivy medicine made the chickenpox turn into gigantor chickenpox. So I had all these scars all over my face, and that young kid’s career ended.”
Comedy Nerd, released this week, is billed as “an intimate, highly visual memoir” from Apatow, complete with previously unreleased photos and letters from across his decades-spanning career.
As a director, Judd’s most recent feature-length project is the pandemic-inspired The Bubble, released in 2022. In the years since, he has served as an executive producer on several projects, including last year’s Stormy Daniels documentary for Peacock.
