Ben Stiller has lived many lives in Hollywood. He was an Emmy-winning writer before turning 30, thanks to his short-lived variety series The Ben Stil
Ben Stiller has lived many lives in Hollywood. He was an Emmy-winning writer before turning 30, thanks to his short-lived variety series The Ben Stiller Show. By 40, he was toplining comedy box-office smashes, including Meet the Parents and Zoolander. Then he turned toward prestige, from an Emmy-nominated turn poking brutal fun at himself in Ricky Gervais’s Extras to a Spirit Award nomination for his acerbic work in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg. All along, Stiller was directing too—breaking out with the Gen-X classic Reality Bites before making movies as varied as industry satire Tropic Thunder and earnest fantastical drama The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
In 2025, as Stiller openly discusses on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read below), many of these strands are converging in thrilling, challenging fashion. He cameoed in the sequel Happy Gilmore 2, which hit Netflix last month, and will start filming a up-to-date Meet the Parents movie, Focker In-Law, in just a few weeks. The movie reunites Stiller and Robert De Niro, with Ariana Grande newly along for the ride. Stiller also recently locked the final cut of his deeply personal debut documentary, Nothing Is Lost, about his own parents, the delayed, great comic stars Anna Meara and Jerry Stiller (hitting theaters and Apple TV+ in October).
Finally, there’s Severance, for which Stiller has been Emmy-nominated as an executive producer and director. Created by Dan Erickson and starring Adam Scott and Britt Lower, the brainy sci-fi thriller’s second season debuted three years after the first—but landed so strongly with critics and audiences that it earned 27 Emmy nominations, more than any other show in 2025. Stiller has promised that season three, which is officially on the way, will make it to air sooner. But he’s also learned to work methodically and carefully. And yeah, Stiller has a lot going on right now.
Vanity Fair: There was a three-year gap between Severance seasons one and two, as has been discussed ad nauseam. That led to a lot of anticipation and a lot of speculation. After the great reviews and audience numbers, do these nominations feel like a final affirmation of it being worth the wait?
Ben Stiller: On a certain level, it’s just the affirmation of when you follow your instinct—knowing that you have to make sure something feels right, and that you get it to the place you need it to be. The frustration for us was that it was taking so long, honestly. Sometimes I look at the outside factors, which are beyond our control, but then also—I mean I won’t lie, I look at my own process too and go, “What is it?” Chris Storer will shoot an episode in an hour and a half or something on The Bear. I’m like, “Goddamn, why can’t I do that?”
That’s the conundrum when you’re in it. You start to feel like, “Oh, wait a minute. It’s going to take this much longer, and then there’s going to be that much more pressure on it for people who will be saying, like, Oh, we waited this long. I hope it’s worth the wait.” You’re just kind of stuck with that, and you have to move forward blindly.
What do you remember about the month or two before the season premiered, when you were doing interviews like this, but you don’t know how people are going to react? Again, it had been quite some time.
I don’t like it. [Laughs] At that point, it’s out of your hands. You finish it—and then all of a sudden, you have all these up-to-date ideas and thoughts. You go, “Well, wait, I can’t do that because it’s over.” You want to feel when you have finished that you’ve done everything that you could do, and then it’s up to everybody else to have their reaction to it. I remember the day that the review embargo was over, I woke up and got this flood of texts and things from people. It’s just my least favorite part of the whole thing, I’ll be straightforward with you. I don’t read reviews, but if they’re good or they’re bad, people will tell you.
If everybody thinks it sucks or they don’t like it, does that mean that the last two years of what you did didn’t mean anything, or was for naught? No. It can’t be that. You have to somehow figure out a way to have that perspective. I’ve been in the business a long time, and usually the response has not been like it is on Severance.
Stiller on the set of Severence.Jon Pack/Apple TV +.
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