Twenty years after the show’s premiere, Samm Levine never tires of talking about “Freaks and Geeks.”

“I’m very lucky and was so proud of the work we were doing,” the 37-year-old actor told Page Six of working on the short-lived series, which ran for just one season from 1999 to 2000 and followed a group of teens living in the suburbs of Michigan. “I knew it was good work, it was a good show and that makes it really easy to talk about.”

Originally brought in to audition for the role of Sam Weir (who was played by John Francis Daley), Levine was weeks away from his 17th birthday when he did a “crappy” impression of William Shatner that would end up landing him the role of Neal Schweiber, an overconfident geek with dreams of becoming a comedian.

Over the years, Levine has attempted to retire the impression, which creator Paul Feig and executive producer Judd Apatow were sure to include in the pilot episode, but people constantly ask him to do it.

“It’s not some flawless impression that gets me accolades,” he said. “It’s not good!”

Two decades later, Levine keeps a detailed scrapbook of memorabilia from his days on-set.

“Our first day [of filming] was Tuesday, March 16, 1999. I’m number three. Neal and Bill wonder where Sam is, Harris appears,” Levine said, reading from a call sheet for the pilot. “I don’t know why I felt like I should hang on to all of it … I was just trying to relish the experience for what it was.”

Levine recalled several funny memories of his time on the show, like an unfortunate decision to not wear an athletic cup during a dodgeball scene, and when actress JoAnna Garcia accidentally punched him in the face. But there was one day on set that he still regrets.

“It was the only day in my career I have ever showed up to any set not fully prepared,” Levine said of shooting Episode 15, “Noshing and Moshing,” in which Neal grapples with whether to tell his mother that his father has been having an affair. In the episode, Neal’s father pushes him into performing a ventriloquist act during an anniversary party that does not go over well in the end.

“It’s my own fault because in every other scene I’ve ever shot, I’m only responsible for half of the dialogue in the scene at best,” he explained, adding that when he got to the set, he realized he knew all of Neal’s lines, but not the puppet Morty’s lines. “That scene was first up that day … and I was just having a really hard time nailing the dialogue. It was slowing everybody down and I just said to the room, ‘You know what, guys, I have to apologize, I’m just not as familiar with the lines today as I should be.'”

Levine left the set to study up, while they filmed the rest of the scene and came back an hour later to reshoot.

“I was fine but it was a hard-learned lesson and, since then, I have never, ever, ever shown up to set without being perfectly off-book,” he said. “I felt absolutely terrible. I’d been there long enough to know how much effort goes into shooting any one scene. I was definitely embarrassed and I apologized to as many people as I could after the fact.”

Throughout his year on the show, he spent most of his time with his fellow “geeks,” Daley and Martin Starr (Bill Haverchuck). He had various scenes with Linda Cardellini (Lindsay Weir), but rarely had to work with the “freaks,” who included Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps and James Franco, save for the series finale in which Franco’s character is forced to join the geeks in the AV club.

“I will say in the 20 years since then, he has calmed down quite a bit and is now a much more reasonable person, but at the time, Mr. James Franco, young 21-year-old James Franco, was a bit of a method-y, hothead type of actor,” Levine said.

“We’re all doing our off-camera lines for him and he was not feeling it from us,” he said. “He felt that we were not giving him the proper performances that he needed to be where he wanted his acting to be. So the line, I believe, is supposed to be something akin to, ‘Whatever, man, I’m not going to hang out with these bunch of geeks anyway,’ and then he storms out of the AV room. On that take, he looks at us and says, ‘Yeah, whatever, man, I’m not going to hang around with a bunch of bad actors,’ and then slams the door behind him so hard, it breaks the set.”

Levine continued, “We were all like, ‘What the hell was that?’ The crew had to come in there and fix the set because we couldn’t shoot with a broken door frame. I remember that took a minute, and then we were all like, ‘Franco, what are you doing?’ And he was like, ‘Ah, you guys are just phoning it in! Come on! You got to be present.’ And we’re like, ‘All right, fine … Whatever you need, your highness.'”

The show held its wrap party in March 2000 on Levine’s 18th birthday. He decided then and there that he would stay in Los Angeles and try to do the whole acting thing. He gave himself six months to book another job before he would pursue another career path, and to this day, Levine hasn’t gone more than six months without a new gig.

It wasn’t until the series was released on DVD in 2003 that Levine realized just how popular it had become, and continues to be 20 years later.

“I’m so happy that the fans were able to find the show whenever they did and resonated the way that we had hoped it would have initially, but better late than never,” he said.

These days, among other projects, Levine is a co-host on “DC Daily,” a talk show available on DC’s streaming platform, where five hosts discuss and debate news coming out of the comic world.

When asked if Neal Schweiber attends San Diego Comic-Con, Levine simply laughed and quipped, “No, he can’t afford it.”