Ben Stiller says new Apple TV film allowed him to ‘process the grief’ of losing his parents
Ben Stiller has made a film about his parents, who were comedy stars in 1960s USA. But does the film actually say more about him?

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Comic double act Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were huge in the 60s. They regularly appeared on the American variety programme The Ed Sullivan Show, while Jerry went on to play the short-tempered Frank Costanza, George’s father, in Seinfeld, and Anne – who died in 2015 – appeared in movies like The Boys from Brazil and Fame. Now, in his documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, actor-director Ben Stiller paints a tender portrait of his famous folks.
When Jerry died in 2020, Stiller began filming the New York apartment his parents shared. A way to remember the place he grew up in before it was sold, it was the start of something highly personal. “I thought, ‘I want to do something that is going to be some sort of tribute to my parents,’ ” he explains, over Zoom. “This was at the beginning of Covid, and there was no chance to do a memorial for my dad. I just felt like this was a way to connect with him after losing him.”
From Jerry’s home movies to cassette recordings, photos and newspaper clippings, the archive was plentiful. Stiller and his sister Amy (also an actor) even found love letters. The silver-haired Stiller, 59, was particularly taken by this intimate insight into his mother and father’s inner life. “When you think of your parents, you don’t think of them in that first blush of young love. And it was amazing to see how much passion they had for each other. I knew my dad was so devoted to my mom his whole life. But to read this frisky back and forth… it was pretty surreal, I have to say.”

Stiller has always been close to his parents, lines between family and work blurring. His mother appeared in his 1994 directorial debut Gen X romance Reality Bites and hit comedy Night at the Museum, while his father played the shell-suit-wearing manager Maury Ballstein in Zoolander, Stiller’s cult 2001 comedy about a dumb-bell fashion model. “I wasn’t stupid – they were funny… I was completely using them,” he admits in the documentary, clearly unconcerned about the “nepo baby” tag.
For a long time, their fame cast an uncomfortable shadow, though. “When I was a teenager, I thought I wanted to be a serious director and make serious movies,” he explains. “I think I was rebelling against my parents, the comedians, but at the end of the day you just go with what makes you happy, and what you enjoy. It’s also a period in your life when you’re trying to separate yourself from your parents, so it’s complicated. As my parents were in the business, it took me a while to figure out what I liked doing for myself.”
If the film sees Stiller explore complex feelings towards his upbringing, fame and the vagaries of showbiz, it’s also a very public form of therapy after the loss of his parents. “I was definitely processing the grief of losing them, but also trying to connect with them more, too,” he says. That his dad obsessively documented their lives – even recording arguments between him and Anne – surprised him. “That deep interest he had in that history and exploring his own issues is something that I really came away with, something that maybe people who know him just from television might not know about him.”

For an entertainer famed for precision-tooled Hollywood comedies like Dodgeball: a True Underdog Story and Meet the Parents, this first documentary of Stiller’s career was a learning curve. “Documentaries are hard. You have to live in the world of not knowing for a very long time, and that’s not something that really comes naturally to me,” he says. “I went through different phases with it. There were times when I was excited by the process. There were times I was really daunted by it and didn’t want to deal with it, to be honest. I was like, ‘Oh no, I’ve started this thing, what is it going to be?’”
What emerges, ultimately, is also a frank look at his own life and a career that frequently took him away from his family. He notes how he’d fly home from shoots on weekends or organise “special places” for his kids to visit on set – “I thought I was doing so much better than my parents,” he says in the film. But he wasn’t. On camera, his son Quinn, 20, vents his frustration about a recent restaurant visit, when Stiller fussed over a photo with a fan rather than spending quality time with him.
Home truths were spilled with Quinn and his daughter Ella, 23, who was cut out of Stiller’s 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, much to his shame. “I was able to really hear what my kids were saying to me and really accept the reality of being who I am, as opposed to the idea of who I wanted to be, and that reality of not living up to something you want to be,” he says. “I’m talking in terms of family relations and really being able to accept that more… which, honestly, I think has helped us.”
Showbiz also put a strain on his marriage. In 2017, Stiller split from wife, actor Christine Taylor, after 17 years. Compared to his parents’ 50-plus years union, he felt like a failure. But, during Covid, he and Taylor moved back in together, forming a bubble for the sake of the kids, and began what Stiller calls in the documentary “a sort of coming together”. Five years on, their marriage is back on track. “I’m really happy right now,” he smiles. “I’m in a great place in my life. I’m very grateful for that.”
Recently, Stiller’s pivoted into television, as one of the creatives behind the Emmy-winning Severance – fulfilling that teenage dream of directing more serious fare. Of course, he still adores comedy, but compared to his parents’ more innocent time, he says things have changed. “We live in a world where taking chances with comedy is more challenging. You’re seeing that front and centre in our country. But I think it’s important that comedians keep doing what they’re doing, speaking truth to power and being free to say what they want. That’s the most important thing.” He is alluding, of course, to the recent issues faced by Jimmy Kimmel, whose chat show was suspended after comments he made on screen in the wake of political activist Charlie Kirk’s murder – even if that suspension has since been revoked.
In his line of work, social media has changed everything, for good and bad. “You have things that go out to huge audiences very quickly,” he says. But are bite-sized, TikTok-friendly gags dumbing down comedy? “I think we’ve reduced our attention spans down a little bit,” he nods, sighing. “I feel lucky to have grown up in the analogue world.”
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Authors
James Mottram is a London-based film critic, journalist, and author.
