Apatow finds way back to his roots via ‘ The Return’

LOS ANGELES — Judd Apatow is returning to his roots.

Having firmly established himself as a powerhouse comedy producer, writer and director — his credits include films such as “Anchorman,” “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up” and TV series such as “Girls” and “Love” — he has circled back to the world of stand-up, where his career began three decades ago.

At age 50, he has released his first onehour stand-up special, “The Return,” which is available on the streaming service Netflix.

“Stand-up is usually the thing you abandon as fast as you can,” he said with a laugh.

In “The Return,” he references the inherent risks when he jokes, “People have asked me why I’ve been doing stand-up: It’s because I wanted to lower my salary and my selfesteem at the same time.”

On a deeper level, Apatow’s special represents the fulfillment of his original showbusiness dream.

Growing up on Long Island, New York — an awkward, TV-obsessed kid whose parents divorced when he was 13 — he fantasized as a boy about becoming a stand-up comedian.

As a teenager, he washed dishes in a comedy club and hosted a high-school radio show as a way to interview comic heroes such as Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling and Steven Wright. Moving to Los Angeles to attend USC film school and pursue stand-up, he eventually landed a coveted spot on an HBO “Young Comedians” special in 1992 alongside rising comics such as Ray Romano and Janeane Garofalo.

But for all his passion and ambition, Apatow found himself struggling to achieve a career liftoff equal to that of some of his comedy peers.

“When I look back, I’m surprised that I ever got on television with how bad I was,” he said.

Comic Wayne Federman, who met Apatow on the stand-up circuit in 1985, thinks Apatow is being too hard on himself.

“Judd was not that bad at all,” said Federman, a co-producer on “The Return.”

Whatever Apatow might have lacked in natural stand-up talent, he said, he more than made up for in drive and career savvy.

“He was always able to navigate the business side of it, whereas the rest of us were just like, ‘Well, I’m trying to work on a new bit about Twizzlers.’”

Pivoting into television as a writer and producer on the Fox sketch series “The Ben Stiller Show” and HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show,” Apatow fell away from stand-up.

“I think I had burned out my interest in it,” he said. “At some point, I just gave up on it and said, ‘The universe has told me what to do.’”

While directing the 2009 dramedy “Funny People,” Apatow performed stand-up a few times, mostly just to see how it felt. Then, in 2014, while working with Amy Schumer on the romantic comedy “Trainwreck,” which she wrote and starred in and he directed, Apatow found himself feeling the old tug with renewed strength.

Inspired by Schumer, he started to get up onstage at New York’s Comedy Cellar in the evenings after shooting had wrapped.

“I realized it put me in a great mood,” he said. “It fired up some neurons that had been asleep. A few weeks in, I thought, ‘I miss hanging out with comedians and being part of the tribe.’”