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The name may not ring a bell with most people, but the producer/director/writer from Mount Clemens has been working steadily in Hollywood for more than two decades and was a major player in two pop culture sensations: the short-lived cult classic TV series , which he created, produced, directed, and co-wrote, and the genre-defining comedy , which he directed.

Feig didn’t stay long in Michigan after graduating from Chippewa Valley High School — the inspiration for William McKinley High in Freaks and Geeks — but his high school days in the late ’70s and early ’80s became the basis for the series about high schoolers in suburban Detroit in that time frame. After a year at Wayne State University studying mass communications and theater, he left Detroit and moved to Los Angeles, transferring to the University of Southern California.

Despite moving away all those years ago, Feig remarks how proud he is to be from Michigan and represents the state in any way he can through his movies.

His movie , which premiered on Amazon Prime on Aug. 15,��stars Golden Globe-winning actress/comedian Awkwafina (aka Nora Lum) and her co-star Simu Liu, as well as actor and WWE superstar John Cena. In the film, Awkwafina plays an aspiring actor from Michigan, Katie Kim, who mistakenly finds herself with the winning ticket of the newly established “Grand Lottery.”

The lottery, recently established in a dystopian Los Angeles in 2030, has a jackpot of over $3 billion. The catch: Anyone who kills the winner before sundown legally claims their prize.

What excited you about Jackpot!?

I love the story and the characters, but also I finally get to make the Jackie Chan movie I always wanted to make. I love the stunt work that he does in his movies because it’s about someone being in over their head — it’s not about a cool guy, a Rambo type. It’s about someone that gets thrown into a situation that they’re overwhelmed by and how they get out of it in ways that can be comedic because they’re relatable.

What makes Awkwafina such a good lead?

Nora is super funny and also relatable. The best comedy actors we have are the ones [where] you say, “That could be my best friend!” They’re not intimidating, you understand them, you care about them, and that makes you immediately go along for the ride with them. Nora has that quality in overload because you just fall in love with her and she feels very real.

Does comedy only really work when it’s relatable?

Yeah! It can be a completely crazy world like this one, but if you put a real character in the middle of it who is like us, that’s when you get your comedy, that’s when you get your stakes and your investment and relatability from the audience. No matter how nuts the situation is, we think, “Oh God, if that was me, I would do exactly what that person is doing.” You need that anchor in the middle of insanity. You can go as insane as you want as long as you make the rules of the world consistent.

Is that why the dystopian setting in 2030 makes it more effective as a comedy, as it’s a recognizable world?

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with what [things] will look like in the future. You watch The Jetsons and all kinds of sci-fi, and you think there are going to be floating cars. I remember thinking, “It’s going to look exactly the way it does now, but there’s just new stuff.”

If you look around, the world looks exactly the same now as it did when I was born 61 years ago. It’s just now we’ve got cellphones, computers, and there’s AI and technology, but the outer trappings of the world don’t change. It’s not like someone is going to tear down the whole city and put up these groovy modular things.

Do you relate to Katie’s character, who left her hometown in Michigan to pursue Hollywood?

Totally! Her journey mirrored mine, coming from Mount Clemens out to California. I came out [in 1981] and became a tour guide at Universal Studios and discovered USC film school and have been here ever since.

I’m always very loyal and in love with my home state of Michigan, and Detroit in particular. I related to someone coming to LA for the first time … as an adult. You expect it to be glamorous; some of it is, but most is just a normal sprawling city. You think Hollywood Boulevard is going to be this beautiful place, and actually, it’s kind of grungy.

And, of course, Freaks and Geeks is also set in metro Detroit.

That was so based on my growing up in Michigan and going to high school. I know the stories of Michigan, and I knew the people growing up. I knew how I wanted to portray them, how they dress and how they interacted with the world. I had seen enough Hollywood stuff making fun of people from the Midwest or presenting them in a way that was very two-dimensional, and I just wanted to bring the three-dimensional experience of the people that I knew growing up and the experiences I had to the screen. I’m so happy we got to do that and to make Michigan such a big part of it.

It’s staggering the impact that the show has had after just one season. It inspired a whole new wave of comedy.

I hate to say we were ahead of our time; I just think we were in at the wrong time because people weren’t doing comedy in that way. That is why I was very excited to do it but also why it was challenging, because all the biggest shows were sitcoms or very over-the-top. Every Emmy we lost [it was nominated for three, including two for best writing] was to Malcolm in the Middle, which is very funny but more amped up in its comedy and going for the big jokes and performances.

We were trying to do something that was almost indie film-style, because I wanted it to be real. I wanted it to feel like what I had gone through in high school, which was that a lot of my friends were nerds and then we befriended a lot of the freaks, too, because we were all outsiders. I wanted to bring the natural comedy that I love.

This story originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of ����vlog��׿��. To read more, pick up a copy of ����vlog��׿�� Detroit at a local retail outlet. Our will be available on Oct. 7.