Ben Stiller returned to the failure of Zoolander 2 in David Duchovny’s podcast relaunched by People. The actor and director had already spoken about his experience with the 2016 flop a couple of years ago, and already then he had offered an interesting perspective on what happened: if the film had been successful, in fact, he would have had to make another sequel , and he wouldn’t be able to focus on more offbeat projects like the ones he’s made since then, like the miniseries Escape at Dannemora and the critically acclaimed Scission series.
Speaking with Duchovny, Stiller returned to this aspect:
I was convinced that everyone wanted this film. And instead I said to myself: “Wow, I must have really screwed up. Nobody went to see it! And it was panned by critics!”
This shocked me, because I didn’t think it was that bad. And that scared me, because I thought I’d lost track of what’s funny, I questioned… I was really taken aback by Zoolander 2. And this has had a lasting impact on me.
At that point I found myself with some space in front of me, where I took time to focus on other projects, not necessarily comedies, working on them and developing them. Even if someone offered me to do a new play or something, I didn’t want to do it.
[…] I’ve always loved making films, I’ve always liked the idea of just being a director, ever since I was a child. And not necessarily comedies. So I was able to concentrate for the next nine or ten months on developing these miniseries.
We remember that in 2018, for Escape at DannemoraStiller received a Directors Guild of America Award.
