“Freaks go all the way.” Though it only lasted for one season, Freaks & Geeks quickly became a cult favorite — and kicked off the careers of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
The teen comedy was invented by Judd AnpatowAnd Paul Feig, which premiered on NBC in the fall 1999. The series follows Lindsay Weir, a teenager living in a Detroit suburb in the 1980s.Linda Cardellini), who falls into a crowd of slacker “freaks,” and her brother Sam (John Francis Daley), who attempts to navigate the ins and outs of high school with his “geek” friends.
“We did our infamous two weeks with the writers locking ourselves in a room and telling personal stories. I wrote a list of questions for everybody to answer: ‘What was the best thing that happened to you in high school? What was the worst thing that ever happened to you in highschool? Who were you in a relationship with?’” Feig recalled during a 2014 interview with Vanity FairThe author describes the writing process for the critically acclaimed series in this article. “That’s where most of our stories came from. It’s more bizarre stuff that happens in real life than on TV. It was a personal show for me and I wanted it to be personal for everybody else.”
Despite being cancelled early, the NBC comedy was nominated for three Emmy nominations and was featured in Time magazine’s “100 Greatest Shows of All Time” in 2007 and left behind a legacy like no other. Cardellini can still recall exactly what attracted her Lindsay to her character to this day.
“Here’s this girl who desperately wants to be away from her parents and what they know her as, but at the same time truly does not want to disappoint or rebel against them and really loves them,” she told Vanity Fair2014. “It was a more interesting approach than all the other teenagers I was reading, who just hated their parents.”
Feig and Apatow went on to have successful careers behind-the-camera and were often able to continue working with some other photographers. Freaks & Geeks stars, they’ve each kept a special place in their hearts for the short-lived show.
“Even to this day, I think I didn’t want to admit thatFreaks & Geeks was cancelled,” Apatow teased during a March 2014 talk at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. “Everything I’ve done, in a way, is revenge for the people who cancelled Freaks & Geeks.”
Scroll down to find out more about the cast of the one-season series.
