If you’ve been anywhere near X over the past few days, you may have seen that Jonah Hill is currently going viral for his cringe-inducing comments on the SmartLess podcast back in May.
If you need a quick debrief, 42-year-old Jonah joined hosts Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, and Will Arnett on stage for the live recording of their podcast, and he had some pretty strong thoughts about being recognized from his breakout movie Superbad, which was released in 2007.
The resurfaced clip starts with Jonah sharing: “I love Brazilian jiu-jitsu, except my body is begging me to not love it, 42 isn’t… My wife is often like: ‘You're not going to become, like, a professional fighter, you know that, right? Like, you're a comedian.’” And when Jason asked: “But, let me ask you something, if we got into it…” Jonah immediately interrupted: “Oh, I would fuck you up. I would fuck all three of you up.”
“And that’s the best part,” he went on to brag. “My favorite thing is people are like: ‘Oh, Jonah Hill, fucking fat guy from Superbad,’ and I'm like: ‘I would fucking annihilate you, dude, I’m not kidding, dude. Try it if you see me, try it, dude.'” He then clarified: “Unless you are bigger than me, fucking fuck around and find out.”
Confused? Don’t worry, I’ve got you. So, back in 2013, some of the biggest names in Hollywood came together to make the apocalyptic comedy blockbuster This Is the End, with every actor playing themselves and cameos featuring everybody from Rihanna to Emma Watson to Channing Tatum.
The six core cast members, however, are Jonah, Jay, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride, who are trapped together in James’s house when the apocalypse comes.
One of the key storylines in the movie is Jay’s hatred for Jonah, whom he believes is faking being a nice guy and fooling the other stars. In one of the first scenes, Seth tells Jay that Jonah will be at James’s party as he tries to convince him to attend. Jay replies: “Can’t stand him, he can’t stand me.”
“He’s, like, the nicest guy in the world,” Seth argues. “He likes you so much. He specifically talks about how he likes you, out of nowhere, he just says: ‘Yknow what, Jay is an inspiration.’” Jay responds: “There’s no way he said that. Also, just can’t stand him.”
But true to Seth’s word, when the characters do cross paths, Jonah appears to be an overly nice person who is incredibly empathetic to everybody else, and remains impressively calm and collected during stressful or rage-inducing situations. Jonah is constantly complimenting the other characters and detailing the charitable good deeds that he has carried out — with all but Jay convinced that he is a saint.
When Seth tells Jonah that he and Jay spent the day doing drugs, Jonah earnestly replies: “I would have been there in a heartbeat, but I actually just adopted this incontinent Spaniel; she’s a really beautiful soul.” In addition, he clearly has a high opinion of himself and his level of fame — telling the other actors that he would be among the first to get rescued amid the apocalypse.
Despite the way that Jonah outwardly presents himself in the movie, there are signs that Jay is actually right about his character from the beginning. Jonah is seen discreetly pushing Jay into a sinkhole while everyone else is running away from it, manipulatively volunteers Jay to risk his life to get the rest of the group water, and even accidentally throws a knife into Jay’s thigh.
And the truth behind his nice guy act is exposed in the second half of the film, when he prays to God to kill Jay. He says: “I hate Jay so, so fucking much. I think he might be the worst person you’ve ever created, I don’t want to judge you, but what’s up? What were you thinking that day? … Just do me one favor, god, just kill Jay. That’d be so tight.”
Jay’s hatred for Jonah is obvious throughout the movie, and comes to a head when he punches him in the face. And after This Is the End’s release, people were gagged when Jay openly admitted that he wasn’t acting throughout the film and genuinely felt that way about his costar.
During a 2017 interview, Larry King asked Jay what his relationship with Jonah was like. Jay looked uncomfortable before bluntly saying: “Erm, yeah, there is one, I guess. I know the man.”
Larry questioned: “You don’t like him?” to which Jay seemingly referenced the phrase “better the devil you know” as he explained: “I wouldn’t say that at this point… It was contentious once upon a time, but I think now we’re each the devil the other one knows.”
And in an appearance on the Last Laugh podcast in 2023, Jay confirmed that This Is the End had utilized “personal shit” for the sake of the storyline, and admitted that he was “real crabby” throughout filming because of his tense relationship with Jonah.
“Jonah and I don’t get along super well, or at least we didn’t back then,” he said. The host replied: “Which comes through on screen,” and Jay curtly retorted: “No fucking shit it does, no fucking shit.”
“It was like this weird thing of mining personal shit, but not for catharsis. Mining it just for comedy,” Jay went on. “In the most commoditized, capitalist way of, like, we’re going to dig up real personal shit, but nobody’s going to go home feeling better about it. We’re just going to turn it into a fucking product.”
Jay even went so far as to confess that while filming This Is the End, he was convinced that it would be a “shitty” movie, and he only accepted that the final product was actually funny when he found himself laughing at Jonah’s performance — despite his personal disdain for his costar. He said: “That’s when I knew it was a good movie; when I was laughing at Jonah’s shit that I never once found funny on set. And then in the movie I actually found myself laughing.”
As for Jonah, he’s never really publicly commented on his and Jay’s relationship, but in a 2024 interview with the Australian, Jay suggested that they’d hashed it out privately over email. He said: “There was never any making up. It’s more that we’re both guys in our 40s now. He did apologize and so did I,” adding that they had a kind of “email handshake.”
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