In a recent interview, Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig shared some of his innermost thoughts with the world on the ’90s show, speaking on why he originally wanted to create it and more.
During the interview with IGN, he said, “I was just frustrated that I hadn’t seen anybody like I had been in high school portrayed accurately on TV.”
“Whenever I would sit around with friends, for some reason my stories from that period of my life got the biggest laughs because apparently weirder shit happened to me than happened to most people. And so those were the stories that would just destroy when I would tell them.”
As well as elaborating on what inspired him to write the book which preceded the show, he also shared the fact that the show didn’t resonate with its viewers as well as he had hoped that it would.
Which would naturally be a huge disappointment.
Feig intended for the audience to re-experience their high school memories “from a safe place”, that place being the show. But he said, “What I didn’t realise is people didn’t want that, especially back in 1999.”
“It made them very uncomfortable. And so that was the rude awakening for me of hearing people go like, ‘Oh, I couldn’t watch that because it was so cringey.’ I’m like, ‘Didn’t you think it was hilarious?’ So that was kind of a bummer.”
Accepting the show’s downfall, Feig was also asked if he thinks that the show would have been more successful and received better by an audience not from the late ’90s.
He said, “I think it would have fared better if we had done it 10 years after we had done it because we were just at a bad time for that kind of a show on television, because game shows had overtaken all the networks.”
“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? was the biggest show,” Feig added. “So there wasn’t a lot of patience for scripted shows that cost 10 times what a game show would cost.”
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