A common joke in Hollywood at the moment is that everyone is getting smaller and on Ozempic. Former body-positive celebrities now subtly attribute their success to “lifestyle changes.” Nowadays, very few people question it, making it a sort of open secret. And then there’s Judd Apatow, who takes the maximum dosage of Ozempic, is aware that everyone is aware of it, discusses it candidly, and has managed to gain 15 pounds in just four years.
It’s really difficult to decide whether to think that’s amazing or ridiculous. Perhaps both. Apatow’s wife of almost thirty years, Leslie Mann, made an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to advertize her new comedy, Spa Weekend, in late August.
Mann hardly missed a beat when guest host Jello Roll, who has publicly discussed his own weight loss journey, brought up the subject of losing weight. “He’s on Ozempic,” she chuckled. “He likes to talk about it.” Then it was revealed that Apatow has been actively combating the drug’s appetite-suppressive effects rather than losing weight. Eating despite feeling queasy. Surpassing the system. Even as the number on the scale rises, he is winning by his own standards.
Here, Apatow has not concealed his philosophy. He talked about eating ice cream and injecting Ozempic at the same time at a Comedy Cellar set in 2024, “just to see who wins the battle.” He admitted to Vulture that losing weight was never his initial objective. “I was almost offended at the idea that a drug could make me lose weight,” he admitted. “Like, ‘F–k you, I’m going to gain weight.'” It seems like a bit, and it is a bit, but there’s also something genuinely intimate beneath it, a defiant attachment to food as solace that he’s not really attempting to conceal.
Mann’s statement that he is “very proud of the fact that the pharmaceutical companies don’t have control over him” provides the best insight into the true situation. Apatow has transformed his relationship with Ozempic into a statement about autonomy, whether or not it began as a joke, even though the reasoning behind that statement is a little confusing.
By his own account, he is spending about $40,000 on a drug that he is actively attempting to stop using. He seems to be aware of how ridiculous that is, and part of the point is that awareness.
But not everyone is giggling. Online responses have been noticeably conflicting. It’s the kind of self-aware Hollywood absurdity that Apatow himself would probably write into a movie, and some people find the whole thing genuinely humorous. Some don’t find it as funny. For those with type 2 diabetes who rely on semaglutide to control their blood sugar, Ozempic and its generic counterparts have caused actual shortages. Against that backdrop, the idea of a wealthy filmmaker purposefully “outrunning” a drug that others cannot afford or obtain is unsettling.
The cultural significance of Judd Apatow’s Ozempic weight gain is still up for debate. When financial stress is taken out of the equation, a drug turns into a game, which may reveal something about how different people with money and security relate to their bodies. Alternatively, it could simply be the public manifestation of one man’s genuinely peculiar sense of humor. Most likely a combination of the two. In any case, Apatow’s fifteen extra pounds feel strangely, stubbornly human in a time when Hollywood is characterized by quiet, medicated thinness.
