Ben Stiller, 58, says he was 'freaked out' by the horrible reviews for his rare box
Ben Stiller did not know it at the time, but Zoolander 2 being a flop at the box office turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
The actor, 58, opened up about the devastating experience on David Duchovny's upcoming Lemonada podcast Fail Better.
'I thought everybody wanted this,' the writer and star said of the 2016 sequel to the hit 2001 comedy, according to People, who had a pre-launch listen to the first episode.
'And then it's like, "Wow, I must have really f***ed this up. Everybody didn't go to it. And it's gotten these horrible reviews,' Stiller added.
He said the film's failure 'really freaked me out because I was like, "I didn't know. Was that bad?"' he explained.
Ben Stiller, 58, didn't know it at the time, but Zoolander 2 being a flop at the box office turned out to be a blessing in disguise (pictured in Los Angeles in 2018)
'What scared me the most on that one was I'm losing what I think what's funny, the questioning yourself... on Zoolander 2, it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time,' he said.
Longtime friend and co-star Owen Wilson returned for the sequel as did Will Ferrell, and Penelope Cruz signed on for the adventure.
The comedy made $28.8 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo, and cleared $56.7 million globally, which just covered the movie's $50 million budget.
Critics at Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 22-percent rating, two points higher than the audience score.
However, since the title of the podcast is Fail Better, the Starsky And Hutch star said that particular episode in his life gave him time to think about what he really wanted to do.
'The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said "Make Zoolander 3 right now," or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that,' he reasoned.
'But I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on — not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop.'
The filmmaker explained, 'I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies since I was a kid,' adding, 'and not necessarily comedies. And so, over the course of like the next like, nine or 10 months, I was able to develop these limited series.'
The 2016 comedy co-starring Owen Wilson and Penelope Cruz bombed, earning $28.8 million domestically and a total of $56.7 million globally
The actor and director said the poor receipts and 'horrible reviews... really freaked me out because I was like, "I didn't know. Was that bad?"' he explained
Still said the failure of Zoolander 2 gave him 'space' to figure out what he wanted to do. Since then he has turned to directing the award winning series Escape From Dannemora and Severance (pictured in Malibu in August 2022)
The actor and director opened up about the experience in David Duchovny's new podcast Fail Better, which was scheduled to debut May 7 across multiple platforms
Those shows included Showtime' Escape From Dannemora. He directed seven episodes of the true crime drama about a prison employee who becomes romantically involved with an inmate and helps him and a friend escape.
In 2018, Stiller won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film and also received an Emmy nomination for the project.
He is also an executive producer and director on the hit Apple TV+ series Severance. Season 2 is expected to be released later this year.
Duchovny, who appeared in Zoolander, took on the podcast which will explore failure 'in all its forms, from the professional to the personal, and the ways in which failure, shame and falling short shaped his and all our lives,' according to the trailer. Fail Better was set to debut May 7 across multiple platforms.