Ben Stiller recently returned to one of the biggest failures of his filmography, which apparently impacted the rest of his career.
If Ben Stiller is primarily known for being a comedy actor, he has also distinguished himself on several occasions as a director. For example, he was responsible for six episodes of the series Severancefrom the miniseries Escape at Dannemora of which he was also a producer, and more formerly cult films Thunder in the tropics And Zoolander.
Zoolander, this satire on the world of fashion in which Stiller also plays the main role, returned to the forefront in 2023 thanks to one of its scenes which became a meme. This resurgence in popularity allowed this comedy to find a new, younger audience, while reestablishing Ben Stiller as one of the greatest actors in American comedy cinema. And in fact, he recently returned to the sequel to this feature film, Zoolander 2who stays one of the biggest failures of his career, which he himself still regrets today.
“Oh who is she?”
Zoolander 2, Ben Stiller’s “injury”
It’s in the podcast Fail Better of the actor David Duchovny (who had also played in the first Zoolander) that Ben Stiller returned to the enormous failure of Zoolander 2 and how difficult it had been for him:
“I thought everyone wanted to see this. And then I was like, “Wow, I must have really screwed this up.” Nobody went there. And the movie received horrible reviews […]. It really freaked me out because I was like, “I don’t understand, is this so bad?” What scared me the most was perhaps no longer knowing what was funny, the fact of questioning myself. On Zoolander 2, it was definitely a wake-up call for me. And it really affected me for a long time. »
“Why do you hate Zoolander 2, Mathilda?”
This failure thus provoked a form of doubt and questioning in Ben Stiller, who had to take some time after the release of Zoolander 2 to refocus on yourself:
“The wonderful thing that happened to me was that I had some time to myself, because if it had been a success, and they said, ‘Make Zoolander 3 now,’ or if they Had he suggested another film, I probably would have gone for it. But I had this time to stay with myself and to be able to think, both about Zoolander 2 and other projects that I had worked on – mostly not comedies – and that I had the time to develop. »
“Wow”
The actor then explained why he needed this time, mainly so he could get back to creating and directing:
“I was just hurt. I was looking for what I wanted to be and do creatively, because I always loved directing. I have always loved making films. I’ve always, in my mind, liked the idea of just making films since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies. »
In any case, we can say that this experience served Ben Stiller well, since he subsequently received a Directors Guild of America Award for Escape at Dannemora as well as an Emmy nomination thanks to the series Severance. A good return of things for Derek Zoolander.
