Judd Apatow and Paul Rudd have been best pals since their collaboration on The 40-Year Old Virgin, but the former has one point of contention with the latter.

Judd Apatow would disagree with the famous assertions such as, ‘beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder’, and that ‘age is just a number’, when it comes to his friendship with Paul Rudd. They first worked together when Rudd was cast in Apatow’s breakout film, The 40-Year Old Virgin, making it over two decades since they’ve been collaborators.

Owing to the fact that Rudd and Seth Rogen have had great chemistry together, the two were selected relatively early in the casting process. They were kept in the audition room for hours on end, only to read the opposite cycles of other actors trying out for the roles of Andy’s friends. That episode was just the genesis of a fruitful friendship that later saw the three of them working together repeatedly in the decades that followed.

They first worked together on Knocked Up, followed by its sequel This is 40, with Apatow planning This is 50 as a culmination of the slack trilogy. Both the previous films witnessed Rudd’s character married to Leslie Mann, Apatow’s real-life wife. The director and The Ant Man actor have worked together less as of lately, maybe because the latter has been quite busy dealing with the Marvel machinery and appearing in other franchises like Ghostbusters.

Apatow spoke about his friendship with Rudd in a recent episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon that he appeared on. He discussed the planning stages of This is 50 and how both the leads of the movie “don’t age”, making it hard to have them portray the film’s couple a decade later. The director also named a few others, including their friend Seth Rogen, and approximately the entire internet, who’d agree that Paul Rudd is apparently ageless.

 “There is just one huge problem, it’s the fact that Paul and Leslie don’t age. So, it will be 10 years and they will look just the same. And I find it annoying, a lot of people do, right,” Apatow said. “The worst part about being friends with Paul Rudd, as the guy who doesn’t age, is [that] I age. So, every picture with him-like, I have many pictures with him over the past couple of decades, and he won’t change and I’m slowly falling apart. He looks exactly like he did 20 years ago, and I look like his dad,” he added.

In the past, Rudd has joked about his looks, saying that his secret to staying youthful is two things, “I’m 80 years old on the inside. In here, pure darkness-and a little moisturizer.” To be just, Paul is a movie star and a superhero in a franchise that emphasizes on keeping its stars in the best shape, so he’s bound to be privy to beauty regimes, dietitians and personal trainers.

Judd does have an excellence when it comes to worrying about the agelessness of his stars. The entire proposition of This is 40 was to shed a relatable light on parenting, marriage and romance during a particular time in a person’s life, through the lens of a certain heteronormative, upper-middle class. What seems a bit hard to relate to in the movie is that, it’s the winner of People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2021 who had played the “everyman”. In spite of this, Paul Rudd has been an extremely good performer, so it doesn’t really matter what movie he’s in, it’s a certainty that people will enjoy watching it.