‘Freaks And Geeks’ actor admits to selling Judd Apatow’s laptop for drugs

Shaun Weiss was struggling with addiction after the series aired

Freaks And Geeks star Shaun Weiss has revealed he pawned Judd Apatow’s computer to score drugs.

The actor, who played Sean in the NBC series, was mentored by Apatow after he left rehab and was struggling with addiction.

Discussing the incident on the Dopey podcast, Weiss said he had sold the laptop Apatow wrote The 40-Year-Old Virgin on.

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“Judd Apatow put me in a rehab place. He was giving me a chance. That was the other thing that was really heartbreaking, too,” Weiss said.

“He was really being my mentor and teaching me how to write and giving me different jobs and assignments that really cultivated me as a writer. He got me a job writing jokes for the Oscars; he just gave me all these gigs, grooming me for better things.”

Of the laptop, Weiss added: “It was a PowerBook, but like, decked the fuck out. It was probably like a $5,000 laptop at the time. One you can’t even really buy.”

The actor said Apatow was “incredibly gracious” about the incident but that he felt he was “crossing the line” with the theft.

“That was hard, that loss,” he added. “Now I was crossing the line, when you take your fucking laptop and pawn that shit, you’re not a writer anymore.”

Weiss concluded: “I never tried to contact him at all since that moment. Do you think he knows that I’m sorry for what I did? I feel like he knows that I’m sorry and I feel like what good does it do me to. I feel like that’s a mess that I fucking made.”

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Freaks and Geeks
‘Freaks and Geeks’ Halloween special. CREDIT: Alamy

Freaks And Geeks creator Paul Feig recently said he thinks the show was too awkward for audiences at the time of release.

Feig said that he originally created the show because he was “frustrated” that nobody like him during his high school years had been shown on TV before.

“What I didn’t realise is people didn’t want that, especially back in 1999,” he said. “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.”

Freaks And Geeks is now available to purchase on digital platforms for the first time ever.

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