Twenty years after its release, The 40-Year-Old Virgin continues to haunt fans’ dreams.

Universal released the comedy feature in theaters Aug. 19, 2005, and the film collected $177 million at the global box office ($293 million today). Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco and Seth Rogen star in the movie centering on Andy (Carell), an employee at an electronics store who agrees that it’s time to lose his virginity.

During a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, Apatow — who marked his feature directorial debut with the project — discussed the studio having major concerns after a few days of shooting, the Stormy Daniels footage that landed on the cutting room floor, his tough feedback for Kevin Hart and whether the movie could still get made today.

I believe the genesis came when you asked Steve Carell for feature ideas during the shoot for Anchorman [which Apatow produced]?

Steve was so hilarious on set every day while we were making Anchorman. So I just asked him if he had any ideas where he was the lead, and he came to me with a few. The third one was this idea that was based on a sketch he had played around with at Second City but had never completed. The sketch was a man in a poker game, and everyone is telling really filthy stories, and when he tells his story, it’s very clear he’s never had sex before.

What do you remember about the casting process?

I asked Steve if there was anyone he had in mind for his love interest, and he said that he loved Catherine Keener’s work. We contacted her, and she said that she was a big fan of Steve, so that just happened very quickly. We never talked to anybody else. That’s why they have such great chemistry on screen. They both really admire each other’s work.

In terms of the rest of it, Seth Rogen worked on the project as a producer, and we always had in mind to have him play a part in the stereo store. I had seen this Jesse Peretz movie called The Chateau, which starred Paul Rudd and Romany Malco, and they just had amazing chemistry together, so I thought I could tap into that.

Leslie Mann played Nicky, the drunk woman he hits on at the bar. I knew that Leslie would crush that, which she did. She was very passionate about throwing up on Steve — that was her idea — and she created her own vomit out of yogurt and granola.

Kevin Hart was someone who I had made a pilot with, and he did a bunch of appearances on our show Undeclared. We all thought, “Kevin Hart is going to be a gigantic star.” He auditioned for Romany Malco’s part. [Later,] I did an interview with him, and he said to me that after he didn’t get that part, he thought he needed to work harder and take more acting classes and really learn his craft. And I said to him, “No, the reason why you didn’t get the part wasn’t because your acting wasn’t strong. It was because I didn’t believe that you could play a lothario. I believed Romany more as someone who got a lot of women.” (Laughs.)

What do you remember about the studio’s early notes?

They told us in the middle of the third day of shooting to shut down. They had a bunch of notes, one of which was, Paul Rudd was too heavy. But I had asked Paul to be heavy — I just thought that was funny. And they thought that Steve looked like a serial killer, which he did. He had these glasses, and he was wearing a Jeffrey Dahmer-type Members Only jacket. There was some concerns that I was shooting it to look too much like an indie — maybe the lighting was not comedy-bright.

So we all chatted and went over the notes, and it was one of those experiences that’s really difficult because we felt really good about what we were shooting. We thought, “Maybe it’s not playing because it’s not edited together,” because we were doing so much improv. All the scenes that we had shot that led us to get shut down are in the movie and killed.

It sounds like Steve got into great shape for the film.

Steve showed up in fantastic shape, which surprised me. He came in ripped from the gym. At first I was thrown. Then I thought, “Well, if someone never has sex, they probably work out a lot. They have to do something with all their energy.” We put a lot of jokes in the movie where people thought he was a serial killer. So that criticism led to some really funny jokes and things that helped our story.

The waxing scene is such a popular one.

We were trying to think of some makeover sequence, but that had been done to death. So we were trying to think of an original way to approach it. Steve said, “Maybe you could just wax me for real, and it’ll hurt so much, it’ll be funny. People will just be able to tell that it’s actually happening.” So we set up five cameras like it was a documentary and just did it. It turned out to be as funny as we hoped it would be because it’s the kind of joke you can only do one time.

We wanted the waxer to be someone who was an actress and also a professional waxer. Miki Mia claimed to have been a waxer, but I think maybe she had only done it once because she clearly didn’t know how to do it, and we almost ripped his nipples off during the shoot.

Do you worry about castmembers laughing during scenes like that?

That’s always a problem when people are improvising a lot because they do surprise each other and make each other laugh. I usually say very sternly to everyone: “If you laugh, whatever’s magical about that moment will be destroyed.” I try to terrify them. That works about a third of the time.

With “Kelly Clarkson,” that was a Rogen line?

Seth was given the job to create a list of curses and a list of clean words that Steve could shout. For some reason, he wrote, “Kelly Clarkson,” and that turned out to be the funniest one.

Had you received a note from the studio to dial back the porn?

There’s two versions of the movie. There’s the movie that was in the theater and on DVD, but then there was the director’s cut. I had never directed a movie before, so when they said, “Do you want to do a longer cut?” I said, “Sure.” I put back in 17 minutes of sequences and jokes that I liked. Within that, there was a whole sequence with Stormy Daniels [who appears in an adult film] talking to Steve in one of his fantasies. That’s how we first met Stormy Daniels. And there was a moment where he was trying to watch pornography, but he kept fast forwarding to the talking parts. I’m sure that during the test, the audience let us know how much is too much porn to have on the screen.

Seth Rogen has said that he regrets his jokes in the “You know how I know you’re gay?” sequence. What are your thoughts about those moments?

That was something that came up during an improvisation and would always get a giant reaction in all the previews. It was all done with a very positive spirit. Looking back, it’s hard to know if we would do it again. There’s just no way to be sure about that. I felt like all of the comments were meant as compliments.

Although comedies have made a splash in theaters this summer, they have been IP projects like The Naked Gun or Freakier Friday. Could your film still get made today?

I think it’s possible. It might be a slightly bumpier road, but I think the studios would love comedies to do very well. The hard part is when you make comedies, you are taking chances. You can’t just make them based on old IP. You can’t rely on just casting someone who’s been in a lot of hit movies. The best comedies come from out of nowhere, and they are often based on unique and wild concepts. Most of them don’t even sound like they would work on paper. People resisted making Anchorman for years. They resisted making Superbad for years. It requires someone to take a risk to have that giant breakthrough comedy.