It all started with an off-hand tweet by Seth Rogen back in January 2014:
The comment was made at a time when Justin Bieber was constantly in the news for his bad behavior, including a high-profile arrest for drunken drag racing in Miami. But now, Bieber’s star is back on the rise. He has supposedly cleaned up his lifestyle and is poised for a comeback this week with the release of his new album, Purpose.
So when Rogen stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Wednesday as part of “Bieber Week,” we knew we were in for a reconciliation of some kind—after all, how long could two Canadians stay mad at each other?
But as he has done in the past during interviews with Howard Stern and Matt Lauer, Rogen mostly dismissed the idea that there is any bad blood to begin with between him and the troubled young pop star.
“We had a beef, I guess, you would say, that’s the word the kids use,” Rogen told DeGeneres with his signature laugh. “It’s not a really a beef, I just called him some really mean things on social media for no real reason.”
“I can’t tell you why I did it, I was inclined to do it in that moment,” he continued. “And then I did it. And then it really hurt his feelings, as it should have. And a lot of people got very mad at me.” Rogen said he finally ran into Bieber today backstage at Ellen and “I guess we made up.”
Rogen was far less kind to the singer on The Howard Stern Show last year, when he described a bizarre interaction they had backstage at another talk show in Germany when Bieber apparently demanded to see him in his dressing room and then ignored him the whole time he was there.
“I was like, ‘What the fuck? I don’t give a fuck about—I don’t want to meet you. Don’t act all nonplussed to meet me. I didn’t want to meet you. I was totally cool not meeting you,’” Rogen told Stern. “But I was like, fine, I wouldn’t have said anything, I was like, ‘He’s a bit of a motherfucker. Whatever. He’s young, the kid’s a dick.’”
“To me the idea that a grown man doesn’t like Justin Bieber is not a controversial thought,” Rogen told Matt Lauer on the Today Show that same week. “Like, why would I? It would be much weirder if I did like Justin Bieber, to me.”
Then, earlier this year, Bieber practically begged Rogen to roast him on Comedy Central, but the comedian declined to even acknowledge him with a response.
As expected, Rogen and Bieber did get the chance to show the world their beef was over onscreen on Wednesday when DeGeneres introduced a mysterious figure to come on stage wearing a giant Seth Rogen head.
The arm tattoos and awkward dance moves told viewers all they needed to know before the head came off and the two men embraced.