Ben Stiller Recalls ‘Zoolander 2’ Flop as “Not a Great Experience”

If Ben Stiller could read minds, he probably would have done things a bit differently with the 2016 film Zoolander 2.

The star, who is a director on Apple TV+’s recently launched thriller series Severance, told Esquire in an interview published Tuesday that having Zoolander 2 underperform critically and commercially was “not a great experience.”

The 2001 original Zoolander — which Stiller directed and co-wrote, in addition to starring in as the titular male model — was a well-liked and highly quotable success that particularly found fans after its home release. When Zoolander 2 hit theaters in February of 2016 — despite the return of castmembers Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell, plus the addition of Penélope Cruz and Kristen Wiig — the film collected just around $29 million at the domestic box office and currently holds a 22 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

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As Stiller explained to Esquire, the disappointing response led him to steer away from helming more comedies and to instead direct Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora. The limited drama series about the 2015 real-life escape of two men from Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York, aired in 2018 and earned Stiller a DGA Award.

“If Zoolander 2 had been a huge hit, and then people were saying, ‘Zoolander 3! Do this movie! That movie!’ — that might have taken me off the road of having the space to work on developing Dannemora,” said Stiller, who has yet to direct a feature since Zoolander 2. “I might have gotten distracted by other bright, shiny objects, but instead it opened a path where I could just do what I’d honestly wanted to do for years and years, which was: just direct something! To say, I’m just going to work on this project that I want to work on, because it takes a little time to get these things going, and if you don’t stick with it, you don’t get there.”