Jason Segel: Addiction needs a voice

Jason Segel is relieved people are finally willing to discuss addiction.

The actor stars in The End of the Tour, in which he plays late author and drug user David Foster Wallace.

Segel himself has battled issues with alcohol but has been sober since 2013. His previous experiences really helped him embrace the part.

“I felt like, ‘Oh, thank God, here’s somebody else who’s willing to talk about these things,’” he said to NPR’s Brooke Gladstone at a lunch for the film, according to New York Post’s Page Six.

The End of the Tour zones in on Wallace’s five-day interview with Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky. It took place just after his novel Infinite Jest was published, which is set partly in rehab.

“I was very hopeful my experience wasn’t unique,” Segel continued. “I think most people [feel that] when they’re going through a hard time.”

Jesse Eisenberg takes on the part of reporter Lipsky. Unlike Segel, he found it a bit harder to connect to his character, as he’s normally on the other end of an interview. Regardless, he was able to slip into the role.

“I have a sympathy for a journalist who is trying to get a story coming up against somebody who is resistant. But I can obviously more fully understand someone who is being interviewed,” he explained to bostonherald.com.

Joining Segel and Eisenberg in The End of the Tour are Mamie Gummer, Joan Cusack and Ron Livingston.