Seth Rogen has starred in films that mirror his life, but none have hit as close to home as Babies.
Directed and written by Lauren Miller Rogen, the comedy drama follows a husband (Seth) and wife (Anna Kendrick) who are questioning whether parenthood is the right path for them. For married couple Seth and Lauren, the film was a deeply personal project that reflected their own journey toward a child-free life.
“ I think this movie is much more personal and much more reflective of my actual experiences,” Seth said at The Hollywood Reporter’s Studio at 1 Hotel during TIFF, presented by sponsor Canada Goose, on Saturday. “I think Lauren has really made a very honest film in regards to her thought process and our thought process as a couple. When I look at it, it’s shocking how personal it is, honestly, and about very personal things in our lives. But, to me, it’s very brave to put yourself out there like that and to write about the things that are kind of the most personal things.”
Lauren was first inspired to make the film when her friend, a divorced mother of one, moved in with the couple for one year about a decade ago. The director initially thought the experience would make for a great television series (“That’s an interesting setup for a TV show. People who don’t know if they want to have kids, has someone move in with a kid”) but the idea didn’t go anywhere, in part because Lauren wasn’t sure how her own story was going to end.
“I didn’t know the ending at that point,” Lauren told THR. “I think once we had the kajillion conversations and done all the work and sort of found our own conclusion, then I was like, ‘Oh, now it’s a movie because I know the ending of it.’ I really started working on it as a movie not that long ago. I wrote the script pretty fast in January of 2025; it was done in the spring and we were shooting the next fall.”
In Babies, happily married couple Annie and Aaron (named after Lauren and Seth’s middle names) welcome their friend (Kate Berlant) and her young daughter to stay with them after she separates from her husband. The couple get a chance to see the realities of parenthood up close, while Annie navigates her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease (Lauren’s own mother died from complications of early onset Alzheimer’s disease in 2020).
Anna Kendrick, who stars as Annie, joked that being that open about her own life on screen would cause her to have a “dissociative experience.”
“I don’t know how [Lauren] did it because some of it felt so close to reality and so intense. I was like, ‘I think I’d be setting myself on fire on set,’” Kendrick said with a laugh.
For Seth, Babies also reflects people’s attitudes about parenthood — including the usage of the phrase “dad duty,” which he finds “obnoxious” — and his friend’s experiences being a parent.
“A lot of these are conversations we’ve had with our friends in real life,” Seth shared. “We hang out with our friends and their kids a lot. An interesting perspective the film has, is that, you can like kids and be good with kids, and be very responsible people, and be in a very happy marriage, and tick every box that one would think you need to tick in order to be the perfect parent in many ways, and you could still just maybe not really want it. That’s a very under-shared perspective in a lot of ways.”
Babies explores the decision to remain child-free, but Lauren wants audiences to know the movie was also made for “people who are choosing parenthood.”
“We’ve been around our friends who have had beautiful families. We have amazing relationships with their kids,” Lauren concluded. “I think that it was about not just making [Babies] feel real and grounded to us, but also sort of honoring [what] we’ve witnessed so many times, and how beautiful that relationship is.”
Babies premiered at TIFF on Saturday and is scheduled to hit theaters in 2027.
