Jerry Seinfeld‘s Pop-Tart comedy Unfrosted debuted in Los Angeles on Tuesday, where its star-studded cast was also joined by a special guest heaping praise on the film.
Jay Leno — alongside wife Mavis — crashed The Hollywood Reporter‘s red carpet interview with Seinfeld, as he joked, “I’m so sick of these hard-hitting, controversial documentaries. Can’t somebody just make a comedy anymore? Everything is a teachable moment and ‘Oh I learned this,’ I just want to come and laugh.”
Seinfeld teased, “Because you’re not smart enough to learn anything,” as the friends of 45 years laughed, and Leno declared that the movie “is exactly what America needs right now, it’s going to be a really funny movie.”
The Netflix film follows a fierce corporate race between Kellogg’s and Post in 1963, as they compete to create a revolutionary new pastry that would become the Pop-Tart. It marks Seinfeld’s directorial debut, and stars him alongside Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Sarah Cooper, Peter Dinklage and Bill Burr.
Seinfeld joked that the “directorial debut” title makes him “feel like a southern belle here, I’m a debutant.” When asked if he wants to continue directing or if this was a one-time move, the comedian insisted, “I don’t want to do anything but stand-up comedy and watching baseball and going for coffee. That’s the only things in life that I like. I’ve done all the other things and I don’t think they’re that great.”
He also explained that he wasn’t so sold on the idea of a Pop-Tart film at first, but was convinced by former Seinfeld writers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin, with whom he wrote the script, on the idea of “why don’t we make a movie like The Right Stuff, only with cereal?”
The cast weighed in on Seinfeld’s directing skills on the carpet, as Gaffigan noted, “He’s very precise, he knows exactly what he wants the scene to land at and we don’t move on until we get it — but it’s not like Eyes Wide Shut or anything.”
Burr added, “He was great. He’s a comedian — all the fat’s trimmed off of it, right to the funny, knew what he wanted, let me improv, if he liked it we kept it, if not he’d be like, ‘Don’t do that, let’s go more in this direction.’ Very quick, it was awesome.”
Unfrosted starts streaming Friday on Netflix.
Tiffany Taylor contributed to this report.