Jason Biggs has revealed that he showed his eldest son his iconic (and highly awkward) American Pie scene before there was any chance his son could find out about it any other way.
Biggs, 47, best known for playing Jim Levenstein in the four-film sex-comedy series, recently shared that he and his wife, fellow actor Jenny Mollen, find that their sons, Sid, 11, and Lazlo, eight, are frequently asked about their famous parents.
“They kept hearing about American Pie and pie and [asking], ‘Daddy, what do you do with the pie?’ and I had to have a conversation with my oldest,” Biggs recalled on an episode of Radio Andy’s Julia Cunningham Show. “I actually showed him the scene. Jenny and I talked about this, and we were like, ‘We want to get ahead of this.’”
In the franchise’s first 1999 film, Jim is caught by his father (Eugene Levy) in an infamously humiliating encounter involving a freshly baked apple.
“It’s my version of a sex talk, right?” Biggs explained. “It’s like, how much do you want them to hear from friends and other people at school, and how much do you want to control the narrative, and it was literally happening with American Pie.”
He recounted a close call when he and his family were “walking in New York on the street and the boys were up ahead and thank god they did not hear it, but a guy walked past us all and literally screamed out back to me, ‘Hey, it’s the pie f***-er,’ and I looked immediately at the boys. They did not hear him, thank god.”
The near-miss made him realize it was finally time for him to have a conversation with Sid.
Biggs shared that before playing the scene, he was curious to hear what his son thought might happen. “I was just curious, and he actually guessed correctly. He guessed it, so in a way, I almost didn’t control the narrative,” Biggs said.
“He was embarrassed to say it, very embarrassed, but I was like, ‘Okay. Let me show you. Let me show you what happened,’ and so I showed him the scene, and he laughed and laughed,” he remembered.
“He was a little uncomfortable for sure,” Biggs admitted. “He did say I was a good actor.”
The American Pie franchise, which follows Jim’s awkward transition into adulthood, consists of four films: American Pie (1999), American Pie 2 (2001), American Wedding (2003) and American Reunion (2012).
Besides Biggs and Levy, there were eight other original American Pie cast members who also appeared in all four movies, including Alyson Hannigan, Seann William Scott, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Jennifer Coolidge, Chris Klein, Tara Reid and Mena Suvari.
