Ben Stiller Wants to Make ‘Severance’ More Quickly—but First, He Needs to Get It Just Right

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 new 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 late, 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 new 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 honest 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.

The way people engage now is so much more immediate. Season two of Severance kind of exploded—there was so much activity on Reddit and all these social media platforms. How did you engage with that?

The cool thing is that people are paying attention to it. What you dream about when you’re making something is that you’re putting in as much detail work as possible.

Like I said, I don’t delve into reading reviews and stuff, but I will go on X or Twitter and interact with fans who are really into it. It’s fun to me. It’s a thing that I never experienced before. You feel like you can connect with somebody—a stranger—and like they were affected by something that you’ve made, but also to be able to go back and forth with them. Or if somebody says, “I don’t really get it,” sometimes it’s fun to go back and forth with them on that too.

I wonder with, say, the finale—“Cold Harbor”—if you ever feel like the way people are picking things apart gets out of control. After it aired, there was so much obsession over this particular moment at the end with Helly R.—people wondering if she was actually her outie, Helena Eagan, and dissecting the way Britt Lower was playing it. What did you make of that?

I never even thought of that, honestly. I swear to God I never thought of that moment [that way]. I thought that was a really interesting take—that look that Britt as Helly gave to Gemma, there was a lot going on there in that look at the end. In my mind, I was never thinking, “Oh, we want the audience to maybe think she is Helena,” but I did think it felt like there was a darkness there.

It reminded me a little bit of a Helena moment in episode 204—in the tent with Irving when she gets upset with him, and there’s this shift in her eyes where you just see this intensity and darkness. Britt has this amazing ability to allow those things to happen and it’s very unexpected. But [in the finale], I honestly did not think people were going to think, “Oh, she’s actually Helena.” But of course, everybody has their ideas.

And it’s fun, though. I feel like that’s something we’ve worked at on the show, to allow space for people to fill in. I think that’s really, really important.

As you mentioned, the sheer success of this show is not that common. This makes me think of your one Emmy win, for The Ben Stiller Show in 1993. I believe that came after it was canceled, correct?

Yeah. It was for the team—the group of writers on the show. And it was [Bob] Odenkirk’s episode mainly, so we all rode on Odenkirk’s coattails for that. But yeah, we’d been canceled for about nine months. It was a totally different time in my life. It was really fun, though, because there wasn’t any expectation. There wasn’t any campaigning; there were no podcasts back then. And even if there were, we wouldn’t have been on it because it was the show that was the also-ran.

We were all ready to move on, because we were all in our mid-20s and not really experienced at writing television. By the end, we were rejecting sketches more, and had a whole pile of sketches that we didn’t think were good enough. The ratio was getting higher as we were getting closer to finishing.

I was rewatching The Ben Stiller Show, and there’s some pretty brutal, spot-on Hollywood satire that really holds up. How do you look back on the work you did and the kinds of statements you were making in that show, especially as somebody who’s had to navigate more corners of the industry since?

There’s something very specific about, in Hollywood, how things happen based on what’s happened before, and people kind of bullshit each other and all that stuff. Nobody ever says no. It’s all very real.

At that time, it was what I was most interested in. I’d been working on a thing that Norman Lear had sent called The History of Celebrity in America, which was almost like a mockumentary about a guy who becomes famous for no reason. Those kinds of stories about the business, the humor of it—I just knew it. But of course, it doesn’t really sell well in terms of—remember the Chris Guest movie, The Big Picture? I loved that movie so much. Martin Short plays this hilarious agent in it, making fun of show business stuff. I loved all that stuff. I was an outsider because I didn’t really have anything on the line—so we just kind of didn’t think about it, really.

Speaking of what interests you: I wanted to zero in on the year 2017 for a moment. You gave two of my favorite performances of yours in that year, in Brad’s Status—directed by Mike White—and The Meyerowitz Stories, directed by Noah Baumbach. Then several years go by where you focus more on directing. Where were you creatively at that time?

At that time, it was coming off of doing Zoolander 2 and having that really be the opposite of a success. [Laughs] It was pretty tough. Personally, I did a little bit of soul-searching. The things that came out that were super positive for me were realizing that I only wanted to work with directors who I really admired.

I didn’t want to act and direct at the same time for a while, because I wasn’t enjoying it as much, and I loved directing. I realized I had never directed anything that I wasn’t in except for Cable Guy, which was a long time ago, and I loved that process. So the space was there after Zoolander. I had time to develop Escape at Dannemora—but I honestly think I would’ve possibly taken another acting job if it had been offered. Instead, I had this space to commit to doing this series. And the first day of shooting on it, I was so happy, exploring genres as a director that I’d always wanted to—because those are the kinds of movies that I’ve been a fan of growing up.

I love working with Noah. I love working with Mike. It was putting all of my creative energy into working on those movies as an actor, but then saying, “I just want to do one thing at a time.”

What can you say about Patricia Arquette as a collaborator? Flirting With Disaster is another one of my favorite movies of yours—I think we’re at the 30th anniversary next year—and she’s incredible in Dannemora. With Severance, she’s nominated again this year, largely for a standalone episode that you also directed. There’s a really rich throughline in terms of your work together.

I didn’t really spend a lot of time with her between Flirting With Disaster and when we did Escape. We had the same manager, Molly Madden, over the years as a good friend, and we’d stayed in touch a little bit. But when Escape came up and it was so clear that she would be amazing in that role, I reached out to her. It was almost like no time had gone by from when we worked on Flirting. She’s just such an honest, open person, and she’s very courageous in terms of her choices as an actor. She just is willing to try things. As a person too, she’s willing to speak out about things she believes in. She doesn’t care; she doesn’t give a shit. She just wants to be an authentic person, and it’s a very unique thing.

I was thinking about you and Mike White both being nominated in the same category this year. You’re both filmmakers who’ve been working for a long time behind the camera, experiencing this real kind of explosion through directing in TV after years of working in indie film.

I know. We’re like these old people. Mike’s not old—I’m old. Mike’s eternally youthful, come on. He’s the Survivor guy. [Laughs] I actually ran into Tony Gilroy the other night. I don’t know him that well, but we were laughing too. It’s like, “Hey, we’re still working. We’re still doing our thing.” That’s something that you really appreciate at this age. I think Mike is a genius. Literally no one else could do what he does; he created a genre with White Lotus. How he does it blows my mind, because he does the writing by himself and the directing.

For people in your world, does TV offer a combination of creative freedom and financial backing that is harder to gain in film at this point?

For sure, right now. The ability to work on something on a scale, and in genres that the studios don’t think people are going to the movies to see—that’s what’s drawn me to it. There are incredible movies being made, but the budget levels for those movies have to be very low for them to be something that’s outside of what the studios think is going to make money. That’s the unfortunate thing. If you want to do something in film that’s not one of the genres everybody feels safe with now, which is horror or sequels or superheroes, you’re going to be limited budget-wise. Some brilliant movies—probably the most brilliant movies—are made on low budgets that win awards and stuff. But it would be nice to have what we had in the ’70s and ’80s and even ’90s, where there were studio movies…whether that’s comedy or drama. I feel like both the dramas and the comedies are missing right now.

The movie that did bring you back to a starring role after taking a seven-year break was Nutcrackers, a sweet holiday family comedy directed by David Gordon Green. It opened the Toronto Film Festival. I remember being at that premiere, and during your Q&A, one of the main points you’d made was the hope that it would come out in theaters.

[Laughs] My dashed hope, yeah.

Disney acquires the movie, puts it on Hulu. It does well on Hulu, but it’s the kind of movie that you’re talking about. Twenty years ago, it would have been a big family movie in theaters. Was that disappointing?

Yeah, sure. I would have loved that movie to be in theaters, because I feel like comedies work really well in theaters. And there’s just nothing like going to the movies. I was very grateful that Hulu bought it and ran it. It’s just the world we’re in now. On streaming, there’s so much out there. It’s really hard to navigate all that and stand out.

You’re about to go into production on Focker In-Law: First of all, are you ready for another round of being called “Focker” all over the place?

Yeah, I’m embracing it.

That’s growth.

It hasn’t really gone away. [Laughs]

This is obviously a sequel to another beloved franchise. With your Zoolander 2 experience in mind, do you have anxieties? Do you feel excited about bringing it back?

Yeah, I have no idea. I hope that people want to go see it. I feel you have to take these things on a case-by-case basis in terms of, “What was this movie going to be? Why should we be making a sequel to this movie at this point?” And the answer was, there’s actually a really good idea, and there’s a script that works that John Hamburg wrote and is directing. It’s a very unique experience to reconnect with characters that you’ve done over whatever it is, 25, 30 years—I just went through that on Happy Gilmore 2, which was really fun.

This one, yeah, I want it to be really good. We all want it to be really good. But it’s daunting—it’s very daunting. I haven’t really wanted to do that again as a director. This one as an actor and a producer, I feel comfortable going in because we have a really good group that all is focused on that. At the end of the day, who knows? But you have to go in trying to make it great.

Do you think about revisiting some of the films you’ve directed?

There’s no movie I’ve directed that I’m trying to do a sequel to right now. As an actor in some of those other movies, like Dodgeball, there’s been talk over the years about that—but that would be up to Rawson Thurber if he wanted to do it. The key is, the creator of the movie has to want to do it. I kind of never say never if it’s something that seems like it could be fun or funny or work. But creatively as a director, I’m still very much more interested in exploring things that might or might not resonate with a broad audience. Going back to comedies as a director—for me, it’s a little bit daunting too, to tell you the truth.

Your next project as a director is the documentary about your parents, and that’s coming out this year. I’m curious about when you started working on it, and how it’s evolved.

I knew when my dad passed away in 2020 that I wanted to make something about my parents. It really did take about four and a half years to really figure out what it was. Talk about not having perspective on anything. It’s my family, and I’ve never made a movie where I’m talking personally about stuff or in it as myself—where I’m also editing the movie. You think, “I want to be honest here, but where do you draw the line with that?”

As I was going along, I was like, “I don’t know if anybody’s really going to want to watch a history of my parents’ show business career.” I was very nervous about it being a “vanity project,” whatever that means. I had an editor early on who was like, “You don’t want it to be a vanity project.” I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t want it to be shit. But it’s about a bunch of actors, and the actors are vain!” Everybody in our family is actors! So you have to accept that too. That’s part of the whole thing.

It became this exploration of how I have kids who are actors, and my attitude towards them. I’m a guy who’s been in a marriage for 25 years that has had ups and downs, and my parents were in a marriage for 60 years that had ups and downs—and how did that cyclically relate to me, and what are the things that you carry on? What are the things you don’t want to repeat, but you do? As my relationship was evolving with Christine [Taylor] over the last few years—because we had had a separation, and we were back together—it evolved in the storytelling too. I was able to talk to her and my kids about a lot of these issues that I never in a million years would’ve thought, honestly, that I would talk about when I first went out to make the movie about my parents.

Now it’s the same thing [as Severance], where I locked the picture a few months ago—but then I started thinking about all these other things I wanted to put into it. Then I realized, “Oh wait a minute. This is going to be a conversation that I’m having my whole life, because it’s really with my parents who are gone.” I’m lucky enough to have all this footage of my parents that I can watch, of them on talk shows and game shows and movies and TV shows. It’s made me miss them a little bit more, honestly. But I feel more connected to them too in some way.

Did you have any models in mind, more personal documentaries like that?

I really love Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell. I think it’s amazing. And I mean, what an incredible twist in that story. We didn’t have a twist like that in our story, but her storytelling and the way that she presented her family was so honest and really affecting. That was one I thought about a lot.

So with all this going on in your life, Ben, the listeners are going to want to know where we are with season three of Severance.

Oh, shit. I haven’t been working on that. I’ve been so wrapped up with this other… [Laughs] Wouldn’t that be awful? People would be upset.

Well, you’ve got stuff going on!

I feel a responsibility to keep this thing going. We have our process, and we’ve been doing the same process that we have done every season. Sometimes I wish it would go faster, but it is our process. I’m aware of the long time gaps between seasons and trying to think about how to have our process, but also have it be able to go faster so that people can get another season. So after season three, I would love to be able to have the cadence be faster. That’s what we’re working towards. But ironically, that takes a little time.

There’s process to process.

It takes more time to make it go quicker, okay? [Laughs] Anyway, all that to say, yeah, no updates right now. But we’re working on it.

Was there anything about season two, the way something came together, that’s informing the creative on season three?

It’s realizing that you have to lean into where the show is taking you. This is from a person who’s not a showrunner, has not done this before in this way, was never really making series. The only series I made was Ben Stiller Show, 13 episodes. We’re accepting of, Here’s where we are at the end of season two. We know where we’re going in this story, but you have to accept how the story changes and what your image of the season is going to be. In my mind, it should be okay for it to be very different, because it evolves into what it is. I don’t think you could even know what that is until you actually have made it.

The challenge and the scary thing of that is: You don’t want to lose the original DNA of what the show is, and what people like about it. But it’s interesting with this show,, because different people like different things in it. So we just try to stick to what we feel is the core of the show, but allow it to evolve into something that maybe we never even imagined.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.