Seth Rogen’s Zuckerberg Jab Cut from Breakthrough Science Broadcast

For those unfamiliar, the Breakthrough Science Awards is an international ceremony that honors major scientific advances. They’re basically the Oscars of science, and recipients receive $3 million prizes underwritten by a group of tech titans: Google founder Sergey Brin, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, and Yuri and Julia Milner.

Earlier this month, the awards ceremony was held, and because it’s the “Oscars of Science,” they brought in a lot of celebrities to present awards at the event, which James Corden hosted. Ed Norton and Seth Rogen presented one award, and if you watch the broadcast available on YouTube, you wouldn’t notice anything unusual during their segment.

That’s because Seth Rogen’s joke at the expense of Mark Zuckerberg and other tech moguls in the audience was cut from the ceremony. Before presenting the award, Rogen—who had apparently been drinking, although I doubt that had anything to do with it—went rogue after Ed Norton thanked several of the tech titans in the room for underwriting the awards, according to a journalist from The Hollywood Reporter who was in the audience.

“And it’s amazing that others [who have been] in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science,” he joked, referring to Elon Musk. “It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr., very fast,” Rogen continued, while a visibly uncomfortable Ed Norton stood next to him.

Later, while describing the work of physics prize winner Gerardus ‘t Hooft, they used a metaphor about a wheel rolling left or right, and Rogen joked that the crowd would “probably roll right.”

Mark Zuckerberg—currently in his kissing-the-President’s-ass era—and the rest of the titans apparently didn’t appreciate being called out and cut those quips from the broadcast, which obviously led to numerous posts like this, giving Rogen’s political jabs far more exposure than they might have otherwise received.