Jason Segel Talks Playing Jason Segel In Innovative ‘Dispatches From Elsewhere’ – Contenders TV

Jason Segel, the creator, writer, director, producer and star of the innovative AMC series Dispatches From Elsewhere, said it straight out during Deadline’s Contenders Television virtual event: he is essentially playing himself.

“My character starts out not knowing who he is and by the 10th episode I become Jason Segel – literally by name. I wanted to write something from my gut. It became really important to me when I looked at what I was doing and where I was going in my life and career to try to challenge myself, to make something that felt like a piece of art. It had been a long time,“ he said of the AMC series, which is based on a documentary called The Institute and involves four characters on a kind of unending scavenger hunt that reveals more about themselves than they ever bargained for.

He describes it all as art in the act of defiance.

“I refuse to believe people aren’t interested in this kind of thing anymore… I just wanted to make something that is a reminder of poetry and art,“ he said, comparing the creative exercise to the way he felt in writing his hit comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall — in which he wrote self-nudity and a Dracula puppet show into the script. “This is just the 40-year-old version of that.”

Check out the panel video above.