#FIRSTLOOK: BEN STILLER ON “THE ZANE LOWE SHOW”

Actor-director Ben Stiller sits down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to discuss Severance Season 3, Meet the Parents 4, and other upcoming projects. In the interview, Stiller also talks about his transition from acting to directing, developing new film projects, and collaborating with co-stars like Robert De Niro, Ariana Grande, and Jim Carrey.

Video, key quotes and photos below. Please credit The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1.

Listen to the full episode anytime on demand with an Apple Music subscription HERE.

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Transcription:

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about discovering his passion for directing
Ben Stiller: Honestly, it was just out of wanting to work and to do my thing when I was starting out. I think I’m a late bloomer, really, in terms of just getting to the place where I feel like even now in my life, I have a really much more clear sense of creatively what makes me happy. And I think I’ve been trying to figure it out a lot of my life and going down different roads, which have all been really interesting. But when I started out, I knew I wanted to be making movies, and I knew I wanted to be doing funny things, and I also loved drama. I was sort of trying to figure out, what do I do? Am I an actor? Am I a director? Am I a writer?

Zane Lowe: You’re driving all over the road at that point, one may say.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. And also not having a self-awareness when I was younger, I think, of really understanding, having a clear sense. I really admire artists at a young age who have a really clear sense of the choices that they make, understanding how important the choices you make are. I didn’t have that sense when I was younger. I was just sort of trying to figure it out and going off of instinct. I started wanting to act and I wanted to make films, but I didn’t know how to do either, other than I grew up in the business. So I knew that you go on audition. Or if you want to make a movie, you figure out what the movie is and you try to put it together.

But I personally, inside, didn’t know what my real calling or direction was, so I just sort of went in different directions and saw what was sticking. Making my own stuff came out of really as an actor in my late teens or early twenties, trying to get work and not really getting hired, so I started to just create my own stuff with my friends. Now, this was, again, it was before phones and all of that, so it was a different process to make your own stuff. It was a little bit harder. You had to-

Zane Lowe: Quite an investment, yeah. Somebody had to back it.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. So I went down some funny roads of trying to get somebody to pay for a short film I wanted to make, or coming up with an idea and getting friends who I was working with, as an actor, to be in it. It was all sort of just … Then there was Saturday Night Live, and that was something that I’d always dreamed of. But then I was there for a little bit and I didn’t quite feel like that was the right fit for me.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about directing and starring in features like ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’ and ‘The Cable Guy’
Ben Stiller: That movie, I think, was me trying to express my kind of filmmaking aspirations or ambitions, things that I loved, but also it was a studio movie that was also seen as a comedy too. I think that’s what … When I think about it, just in retrospect, for me, it was trying to make something that I felt really connected to that was maybe also in a box that the studio saw as maybe wanting it to be something else. Even with Cable Guy, going back to Cable Guy, it’s the same thing. It’s like Cable Guy. Let’s make a weird dark kind of … We watched Roman Polanski’s The Tenant and thought, “Oh, let’s do that in a comedy.”

Zane Lowe: Which blows my mind, Ben, because you’re dealing with a star at the time, and you’re paying him the most amount of money any male actor has had on screen for a weird dark film you’re trying to make. That in itself is such a paradox.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. Well, it was the fact that he was in that position that we could make that movie, and that Jim Carrey wanted to make that movie. But it’s interesting because I never thought about it in relation to Walter Mitty, but it’s the same thing, trying to fit my desires not to necessarily do what maybe people were expecting in that genre. So the studio would be a little bit like, “Oh, well, wait. What are you making here?”

Zane Lowe: What are we marketing here?

Ben Stiller: What are we marketing? Exactly. And so that is part of, I think for me, the evolution of realizing, “Oh, okay, this is actually what I really want to do,” that led to me directing other stuff.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about moving from comedy and acting into drama and directing
Ben Stiller: When you start to make movies and people go to them, and you start to be seen as a comedy person or whatever, it’s amazing to have that connection with an audience, and it’s fun to do. But if you do have other stuff going on, sometimes it’s harder to go in a direction where people don’t necessarily see you.

Zane Lowe: Yeah. Because your identity. You’ve just done a whole lot of identity work that you can’t control, because we like you as that guy.

Ben Stiller: Right. Right. Exactly. Which is great. I appreciate that. But it becomes down to the personal choices that you have to make as you go forward of, like, “Okay, well, but how do I feel about that?” And that can be tough for a relationship with an audience if you want to go in a different direction. But you have to listen to yourself and you have to have the courage to do that. And I think for a long time, I didn’t necessarily, until I got to a place where I was like, “Oh, no, no. I actually just want to do something that … because I really want to see this movie.” Personally, I want to see this thing. And that, for me, helped clarify my choices.

Zane Lowe: Which film was that? What choice was that?

Ben Stiller: I think for me, honestly, it probably came down to Escape at Dannemora, the limited series I did for Showtime that was a prison break. That wasn’t true story, that wasn’t a comedy, and I wasn’t in it. And I was … the first thing I’d directed, except for Cable Guy. I was in Cable Guy a little bit. That, I wasn’t in. And it was so … It was such a personal breakthrough for me because I was so happy. I remember the first day on the set. I mean, honestly, it’s going a little deep here, but, it’s that thing of, as an actor, I was so happy not to be acting and just directing, and not having to direct myself or have to see myself on the screen or any of that stuff. It was like, “Oh, this is what I wanted to do since I was 10 years old, is make movies.” Just make movies. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the other stuff. But same thing with Severance too. I love directing. I’m happy, very happy to just be doing that job, and actually having directed a lot of movies I was in, I found it much more enjoyable and fulfilling to just do one thing, and really concentrate on that and be there fully as the audience, the first audience for the movie that you’re making.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about casting Adam Scott in ‘Step Brothers’
Ben Stiller: Well, I was a fan of his from Step Brothers. I saw him in Step Brothers, which is… That’s just a ridiculous character, who’s this really awful guy.

Zane Lowe: He’s so awful.

Ben Stiller: But so funny. And Mitty kind of needed this guy who was sort of the antagonist, and knew he would… It sort of like, it made sense from that movie, that I could see that. But really, I just credit that Dan Erickson, who wrote Severance, the pilot, when he wrote this part, it was so specifically tailored, I thought, to what Adam could do, because it was something that was deeper underneath than what you might think on the surface.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about the essence of ‘Severance’ and creating the unique story-world
Ben Stiller: This is what I like about the show, is that it brings up a lot of issues that we have in real life. That the metaphors in the show are kind of very… And that’s because Dan is such a smart, interesting writer, that he came up with this idea that’s like, “Oh yeah, this could be about just life in general. What are we all doing here? What are you and I doing here? We’re here in this room doing this thing and it’s amazing, but what is it really about? And where do we go after in life, once we’re not here anymore?” All those things to me, which are really interesting, are kind of encapsulated in the show. And so, for an actor, it’s a really interesting, I think, exciting, fun challenge, to have to explore that

Zane Lowe: It’s got to be a challenge for all of you. I can imagine that there’s been times, when you’ve all got together and gone, “Okay, where are we right now? How is this making sense? Are we honoring the vision, because…? “As an actor, am I presenting innie versus outie correctly?” And you’re like, “Am I seeing this through the lens, the way that it needs to be seen?” Because it is not your linear viewing experience. It is very multi-dimensional.

Ben Stiller: The first season of the show was fun, because Adam [Scott] really got to play these two different characters, really, even though they’re the same person. One was in such a depressed, grieving state, and just heavy and dark. And then his innie was just not that. Not questioning his world, and kind of a company man, but not really invested the way that Irving, John Turturro’s character, was, in terms of the theology of the place and all that.

So, it was a great sort of fun balance to go back and forth between, and I think that really helped us in the first season sort of establish… Having those two aspects of him, they were so clearly different, really helped us sort of find our way through, because it was very clear. And then, I think as the show has progressed, it’s gotten much more nuanced, and kind of layered, because there are so many different things going on in terms of his innie character and his outie character.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about the challenges of editing scenes in ‘Severance’
We’ve been working on the show for a few years now, and we’ve done a bunch of episodes. Not that many episodes, but there’ve been so many different challenging, interesting scenes. I mean, the thing that’s sort of freshest in my mind right now, is the scene that Adam [Scott] does in the end of the second season, where he has this conversation with himself where he videotapes himself.

And that was challenging on the writing, because we kept on rewriting it, and trying to figure out, what would this conversation be? And then, for Adam, just to be able to actually figure out how to play both sides of that, and having to do both sides of it. And then, the technical aspect of just having to, “All right, we’re going to shoot all of your innie side now, and then we’re going to shoot your outie side.” And then, wanting it to build. And on the page it’s sort of feeling like, “Oh, this could just be a kind of a boring 15 minute..” It’s like 17 minutes I think, in the show. And in the back of my head all the time, I was like, “Ah, I hope this is interesting. I hope this is interesting.”

But when we got our first cut of it together with Jeff Richmond, who edits the show, we watched it, and it was long and it wasn’t quite, didn’t get the rhythm of it totally right. But it was just fascinating to watch, for me as an audience, because of where we were in the story. So, I felt like… It’s kind of the same way the end of the first season, I think, paid off a lot of what was set up during the season. This scene was sort of, we were building to this scene. So, really, as long as it was done in the right way, it was going to be interesting-

…because as an audience, he’s talking about these things that you really want to understand.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about the future of his acting career
Ben Stiller: I think it goes back to that choice of saying, “I only want to do things that I want to see.” And I think as an actor being in that world over the years and doing those movies and having fun, as I started to get closer to the ideas of what I really makes me happy or what makes me excited when I watch it or what creatively fulfills me, I think I’ve just decided that as an actor, I’m going to wait until that comes along. And sometimes those opportunities are few and far between, especially when you go away from acting for a while. The train moves on, and I personally am not dying to see myself in anything else ever again. I’m not going to go, I can enjoy a movie that I’ve made as a director because of all those elements, but then when I’m looking at myself, it’s much more complicated and harder.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about working with Robert De Niro on ‘Meet the Parents’
Ben Stiller: He [Robert De Niro] knows what he’s doing. And at first it was a little bit embarrassing. It’s been a while, but the first scene we did ever together, I cracked up.

Zane Lowe: Which one was that? Do you remember which one it was?

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I was at the front door in Meet the Parents when I meet him for the first time, and it’s literally the first thing I say to him. I look and I think I said, “Hey,” I forget what the line was. And then I looked at the house and I was like, “Oh, this is nice.” I looked up at the house and then he looked at me and went, and it cracked me up. I was like, “Oh my God, Robert De Niro is reacting to something I’m doing.” And it’s funny. It was so funny. It still makes me laugh because he’s, he’s really funny. But man, he’s so good. And he’s any great actor, that’s what they listen and they react and they’re in the moment. Same thing as ‘Spinal Tap.’ It’s all listening. And when you’re in the moment and you’re reacting to the reality of what’s going on, that’s the best.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about casting Ariana Grande on ‘Meet the Parents 4’
She’s [Ariana Grande] amazing. Amazing in Wicked. I went to see Wicked with my daughter in the theatre and had the best time. And I can’t really say too much about it, but she’s going to be so great in this movie, and it’s going to be really fun to play with her because it’s a very specific character that she’s playing. And I think these movies are all about the family interactions and the subtlety of the things where we’re trying to, everybody wants to get along with everybody, but we all have our baggage. And that’s what I like about Meet the Parents, it’s really about these dynamics that we all can connect with.

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about his next film project
Just movies to direct. I think it’s been a long time working on Severance, wanting to go out and make a movie that’s not a 10 hour story, because that is challenging to have a beginning, a middle, an end in two hours. There’s a movie of the Rachel Maddow podcast, Bagman, that I’m trying to get made.

That we’re kind of close on, which was about a political story from 1973 that the Vice President of the United States was a crook, after Richard Nixon, was a crook and was about to be impeached. And these young assistant U.S. attorneys in Baltimore stumbled onto this case where they realized the Vice President was taking kickbacks and was a crook also and was about to become President.

It’s a great podcast and it’s kind of an underdog story about these young guys who were in their 20s, who had to go to the Attorney General of the United States and say, “We got to prosecute the Vice President,” so that’s one.

And gosh, there’s a World War II movie I want to make about a turret gunner in a B-24 that gets shot down over occupied France and a survival story, how he has to get home.

I love movies and I’m really excited about making something for the big screen, because there’s nothing like going to the movies. And I’m really happy that the filmmakers who are Chris Nolan and Chris McQuarrie and people who are making these big movies-

Ben Stiller tells Apple Music about Season 3 of ‘Severance’
It’s also like a gift, too. Because you’re like, “How lucky are we that we have a show that when season three does come out, that there will be people who are waiting to see it?” I mean, honestly, that’s probably the most challenging thing making stuff these days, is there’s so much out there, video games, phones, movies, TV, everything. To have something that there’s going to be an audience waiting for it and they’re going to be critical and they’re going to be really ready for it and asking questions and you need to make sure it’s good, but they’re there.

And for me, that’s the gift. So it’s just, again, going back to that instinct inside, for all of us who are making the show, what do we want to see, what interests us? What do we think will be surprising? What do we think will be true to the show? It is a question on a show like this, what is the heart of the show? Is it the relationships, is it the mystery? Is it what is Lumon up to? All those things, there’s so many different aspects to it.

And ultimately, the show is, look, we’re human beings. So I feel like ultimately, the human connection is what it’s all about, the human experience. And to me, anything that I ever watch, it’s always on an emotional level, when something hits me on an emotional level, moves me, makes me feel connected to the world or to other people in some way, the stuff we were talking about earlier, that’s what it’s all about. And I think that’s always been sort of, for me, what the point of the show is. That’s not giving anything away, is it?