Seth Rogen and Wife Lauren Miller Rogen Take on Alzheimer’s: 'It Was Scary and Unnerving'

Lauren: I wasn’t like “No, I won’t go to therapy.” I was like, “I feel terrible. I’ll do anything to feel better.”

What have you learned about being a caregiver from seeing Lauren’s dad do it?

Seth: Because of how hard it is, we were like, “This will kill him. He will drop dead trying to lift Lauren’s mother from one chair to another one day.”

Lauren: We were like, “This is not sustainable. You’ve got to move to California [from Florida] and we can be close.” And that’s what they did.

That story in the documentary of your dad taking your mom home from your wedding, and she starts yelling on the plane, and they have to get off the plane. It just seems like, what do you do?

Lauren: Life seems to be highs and lows. And that was that weekend. I truly hate that that happened and that’s part of my dad’s memory of our wedding weekend. But that’s life, and we’ve turned a lot of that pain into good. That was a learning experience and then we moved on.

Jessica Pon

Four out of 10 cases of dementia might be preventable by adopting brain-healthy habits. Which of those are you doing?

Seth: All of them.

Lauren: At Hilarity for Charity, we teach five brain-health habits: sleep, nutrition, exercise, mental fitness and emotional well-being. We really prioritize sleep, and we have different accoutrements that we’ve brought into our bedroom: cooling pads, weighted blankets, eye masks, white noise machine. We have a pretty consistent bedtime, between 10:30 and 11. And mental stimulation, which is learning new things. We took up pottery, which has been a great hobby for us.

Lauren: You know, we’re taught as young people, “Don’t smoke because it’s bad for your lungs. And don’t eat this, that and the other because it’s bad for your heart.” But the brain hasn’t really become a part of that type of education.

Seth: We’re not telling people, “You’ve got to do some weird thing that is outside of the norm of human behavior.” It’s all in line with what you would assume is being healthy in general.

How many movie paychecks did it cost to care for someone with Alzheimer’s?

Seth: It depends which movie — either several, or one fraction of one. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to give someone good, 24-hour-a-day in-home care. And it’s not giving you anything other than some slight sense of normalcy. It’s not like you’re working toward a cure. It’s not treatment.

Lauren: Hopefully, as time goes on, our country will understand how to support caregivers. You should be able to make a choice of how you care for your loved one, whether in your home or in one that is professionally run.

How do you choose the applicants that Hilarity for Charity gives home care grants to?

Lauren: We put together a small committee who reads every application every month. There is a point system applied, and if the application scores a certain number, then we really read the story. What’s hard is that everyone is deserving. But you have to be like, “OK, this situation feels more dire.”

Lauren, when you were making this documentary and rewatching some of these moments with your mother, what did you learn about yourself?

Lauren: There are times I can watch the film, and it’s like, “Oh this is a powerful documentary with a lot of information.” And there are other times I watch it and I’m like, “This was the darkest time in my life.” Seeing my mom and what this disease did to her is always imprinted on my mind. But like any type of grief, it’s more present sometimes and less other times.