An American Pickle

Pickles, Politics & Vanishing Co‑Stars: The Surprisingly Messy Gossip Behind An American Pickle

Seth Rogen getting brined for 100 years isn’t even the weirdest thing about An American Pickle. Behind the scenes, this “small” comedy came with cut characters, culture-war controversy, streaming drama, and enough fan speculation to fill a whole barrel.

Scandals & Controversies: The Israel Comments That Blew Up the Promo Tour

When Seth Rogen went on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast to promote An American Pickle, he accidentally turned a quirky HBO Max comedy into a geopolitical flashpoint.

• During the interview, Rogen said that as a Jewish kid he’d been “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel,” complaining that no one told him “there were people there” and joking, “You don’t keep all your Jews in one basket… especially when that place has proven to be pretty volatile” .
• The comments sparked a full-on diaspora drama: American Jewish groups, Israeli media, and Twitter/X all dogpiled in, treating a briny time-travel comedy like a UN resolution ^[1][2].
• Isaac Herzog, then head of the Jewish Agency, publicly claimed Rogen called him and apologized for the hurt he caused, framing it as a “frank, open conversation” and a misunderstanding ^[1].
• Rogen later pushed back in an interview with Haaretz, insisting he didn’t apologize and that his jokes had been misconstrued, while stressing he didn’t oppose Israel’s existence and was criticizing his education, not the state itself ^[1][3].
• Jewish outlets noted that even after the supposed cleanup, “many Jews were left with sour tastes in their mouths” over the whole debacle .

Basically, Herschel wasn’t the only one getting canceled in Brooklyn. The movie’s press run turned into a miniature culture war, overshadowing the film itself.

Casting Controversy: The Curious Disappearance of Maya Erskine

If you felt like An American Pickle was oddly dude-heavy, you’re not alone.

• Back in 2018, trade announcements listed PEN15 star Maya Erskine in the cast. Fans reasonably assumed she’d be playing Claire, the non-Jewish girlfriend and second lead of Simon Rich’s original New Yorker story, “Sell Out” .
• In the finished film, Claire simply does not exist — the plot is refocused almost entirely on Herschel and Ben, with Sarah Snook appearing briefly as Herschel’s wife in 1919 and Molly Evensen in a small role ^[5].
• The Mary Sue called out the decision, arguing that by cutting Claire, the adaptation turned into a far more male-centric, “two Rogens and some pickles” story, and wondered just how far they got into production with Erskine before axing the character ^[5].
• Over on Reddit, viewers noticed Erskine was in press materials as late as July 2020, only to vanish from the final product, sparking speculation about deleted scenes and late-stage rewrites .

No official explanation has been given. Rumor-wise, all we can say is: something clearly changed in the brining room.

On-Set Secrets: Seth Rogen Literally Shot the Movie Twice

You know what’s more exhausting than arguing with your relatives online? Arguing with yourself on camera — twice.

• Director Brandon Trost and Collider spilled the technical tea: because Herschel has a big beard and Ben is clean-shaven, Seth Rogen had to film the entire movie as Herschel first, then shave and come back to redo the whole thing as Ben .
• The team used classic “twinning” tricks — split-screen shots, a body double, and CG-assisted facial-dot work — but the beard issue meant the schedule was a continuity nightmare, with scenes effectively shot two separate times months apart ^[7].
• Body double Ian Poake stood in opposite Rogen for both characters, often miming expressions and even describing his movements aloud so Rogen could match eyelines and reactions in the second pass ^[7].

No reported screaming matches or thrown props — just a quietly brutal shoot where Rogen became his own most demanding scene partner.

Leaks, Cuts & Fan Theories: The Missing Claire and the Brine Multiverse

With studio silence on Maya Erskine and Claire, fans did what fans do best: spin theories.

• Reddit threads pointed out that Erskine was promoted with the film, then mysteriously absent, prompting suspicion of fully shot but unreleased Claire scenes sitting in some hard drive, pickling forever ^[6]. This remains unconfirmed, but the timing has kept the rumor brine nice and cloudy.
• Other fans on discussion boards leaned into the movie’s surreal premise, speculating — purely as headcanon — that:
• Herschel never actually wakes up; the modern-day storyline is his dying hallucination as he drowns in pickle brine.
• Ben and Herschel are metaphorically the same person, with the “100 years” gap acting like a psychological split between immigrant ancestors and their anxious millennial descendants .

These theories never became mainstream headlines, but within film-nerd circles they turned the cute HBO Max comedy into a low-key existential crisis.

Streaming Drama: The HBO Max Vanishing Act

Even the film’s distribution got messy.

• Originally produced by Sony for theaters, An American Pickle was sold to HBO Max in 2020 so it wouldn’t be delayed by COVID shutdowns — one of the streamer’s early “Originals” .
• Then, in 2022, users noticed something bizarre: several Warner Bros. “original” films had quietly disappeared from HBO Max, including An American Pickle ^[9].
• A Reddit thread documented the stealth purge, with subscribers baffled that movies promoted as part of the platform’s launch identity were being yanked with no fanfare or clear explanation ^[9].

No lawsuit drama, just corporate cost-cutting and a lot of confused Seth Rogen stans asking, “Where did the pickle go?”