Ben Stiller Recalls a Plea to Stop Casting Him in Comedies: ‘I Don’t Know What the Zeitgeist Was’

Ben Stiller is still thinking about an opinion piece from more than 20 years ago.

The “Severance” director said during The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast that after starring in 1996’s “The Cable Guy,” 1999’s “There’s Something About Mary,” and 2000’s “Meet the Parents,” the Los Angeles Times published a plea to stop casting Stiller in comedies.

“I remember opening up the L.A. Times and there was this writer who wrote a letter: ‘Dear God, stop putting Ben Stiller in comedies,’” Stiller said. “I was just like, I don’t know, I’m here, I love doing what I do. But it’s only in retrospect that I can go, ‘Wow, there was a thing happening that I was fortunate to be a part of.’ But I don’t know what the zeitgeist was.”

He continued, “You can look at 2000s comedies, and they were a specific kind of thing, a tone, and there were a lot of great things in those comedies that we don’t have now. I don’t know if you could recreate that.”

And while Stiller acted in films like “Dodgeball” and “The Heartbreak Kid,” he also continued directing features…just not outside of the comedy genre. That is, until he helmed true-crime limited series “Escape from Dannemora” in 2018.

“The only part of it that was nagging at me is, I liked to do other kinds of movies as a filmmaker and I never really stopped to make the time to do that,” Stiller recalled thinking at the time.

These days, Stiller is less concerned with external opinions. He’s still working on the internal ones.

“I’m at this point in my life, do I really want to take this chance right now? How much do I care about what the ‘bad’ result is? You care a little less about that,” Stiller said. “The day after something doesn’t do well or if it gets bad reviews, it’s not like anything in your life has changed. It’s just how you feel. You feel embarrassed or you feel like, ‘Damn, I wanted to be the winner.’ But winning doesn’t always happen. It usually doesn’t happen. So how do you live with that?”

Speaking of 2000s comedies, Stiller is returning to the longrunning “Meet the Parents” franchise alongside fellow original stars Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, and Blythe Danner, who are all also set to reprise their respective roles. The “Meet the Parents” franchise is one of the more successful comedy series ever, with a total franchise gross of over $1.13 billion at the global box office since debuting in 2000.

Jane Rosenthal and De Niro will produce the new “Meet the Parents” through Tribeca Productions, with Stiller and John Lesher producing through Red Hour Films.