In the new Hulu/FX limited series Fleishman Is in Trouble (which hits the streamer Thursday, Nov. 17), Adam Brody’s character—an aging, single finance bro who starts to question his commitment to eternal youth—is named “Seth.” Does the actor wish his new role didn’t share a name with his iconic heartbreaker/comic-book nerd from the early-aughts teen drama, The O.C.? “Sure,” he acknowledges, but maintains that the re-Seth-ing didn’t plague him too much. “I would see ‘Seth’ on my trailer door and it didn’t give me flashbacks. I wasn’t always thinking of Seth Cohen.” He starts again, “Although, you know…”
Even though he may always have the ghost of Seth Cohen in the back of his mind, Brody and the types of characters he’s been playing have matured. When he began The O.C., Seth #1 was a high school sophomore, and Brody was 23. Now on the cusp of turning 43, he’s playing a Seth in his own demographic. “It’s very exciting at any time in my career where I can play someone that is more or less my exact age and I can bring everything I’ve learned to it, rightly or wrongly,” he explains.
His castmates have also grown into their middle-aged roles on Fleishman Is in Trouble, years after early iconic parts. Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg plays the titular divorcee Toby Fleishman, who is just beginning to enjoy a newly single, Tinder-amped life in Manhattan when his theatrical-agent ex-wife (My So-Called Life grad Claire Danes) disappears after dropping their kids off at his apartment. Seth and Toby also reunite with their old friend from a college year abroad in Israel: Libby, who is played by Mean Girls and Freaks and Geeks alumna Lizzy Caplan. For viewers of a certain age, watching Fleishman is like watching avatars of your angsty youth deal with the grim realities of middle age. “Somebody said to me the other day, ‘It makes you feel old,'” Brody says.
Right now, Brody is exactly where he wants to be in his career. During and after The O.C., which ran from 2003 to 2007, he had opportunities, but nothing that turned into his next hit. “I sort of treaded water for a long time,” he says. Bitter, he says, is too strong a word to describe how he felt, but he knows luck was not on his side even if he did generally enjoy his life and his work during that period. But something shifted in the last five years. He popped up in a surprise horror hit (Ready or Not), a Best Picture nominee (Promising Young Woman) and a superhero franchise (Shazam! and its upcoming sequel). Fleishman, however, is “precious” to him.
Brody didn’t need to audition for his role. In fact, he received a personal appeal to sign on from executive producer Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a former GQ contributing editor who adapted the limited series from her 2019 bestselling novel, and Eisenberg and Caplan also each wrote him an imploring letter. “I would have gladly done it, regardless, of course,” he says. “And I’m not an overly sentimentality person—I don’t think any of us are—but it was such a lovely welcome into joining this friendship.”
Esther Zuckerman
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