On with Kara Swisher: Why Ben Stiller Made Severance

Ad Break - Various Speakers:

Ad Voice 1: AI agents are getting pretty impressive. You might not even realize you're listening to one right now. We work 24/7 to resolve customer inquiries. No hold music, no canned answers, no frustration. Visit sierra.ai to learn more.

Ad Voice 2: Not all journalism is the same. Take The Guardian. Our coverage has something unique: fierce independence. Nobody owns us or tells us what we can and can't say. So we're free to report the whole picture. We connect what's happening in Washington to the rest of the globe, expose corruption wherever we find it, and give fresh perspective on everything from wellness and soccer to culture, the climate and more. Read, watch and listen to The Guardian for free at theguardian.com.

Ad Voice 3: From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and Heavyweight is back. The new season is bigger than ever. Bigger hopes? "I keep waiting for this moment when he says, 'Mom, I get it. I'm sorry.'" Bigger dreams. "Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This is a real chance." And bigger heartbreaks. "I thought it would be my movie moment. And maybe he would even whisper in my ear, 'I've always been in love with you.'" Check out new episodes of Heavyweight on Apple Podcasts.

Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. We're off for the holiday, but we're bringing you a great episode of my other podcast, On with Kara Swisher, my recent interview with Ben Stiller, whom Scott and I adore. Ben is the executive producer and go-to director of one of my favorite shows, Severance. We talk about all things innie and outie, and Ben also shares his thoughts about being an Elon Musk target. Enjoy the episode. Scott and I will be back on Friday.

[Sound of mic adjustment]

Ben Stiller: The M7 is a little... it picks up noise. It's a much better mic.

Kara Swisher: Okay, how's that?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, that's good.

Kara Swisher: You're very manly. It's great.

Ben Stiller: Okay, good. Good.

[Intro music fades in and out]

Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm talking to actor, director, and producer Ben Stiller, someone I've gotten to know over the past few years and really enjoy talking to.

I really enjoy the second season of his hit series, Severance, and it's finally arrived after almost three years. I like the first season, but the second season has really taken it to a new level. This is Apple TV's dystopian workplace comedy thriller about a company that's taken work-life balance to the extreme. In the world of Severance, employees at the company called Lumen can choose to sever their brains into two selves: one for work and one for living. When they clock in at 9 a.m., their brain is wiped clean of the outside world, and when they clock out at 5 p.m., it's wiped clean of work.

I just love this show. I can't explain why. You have to watch it. It's about a lot of things that are going on today, but it's also about a lot of things that have gone on for a while. It's about who you are and the unconscious. It's also very, very funny, which is the best part of it.

Ben is the show's executive producer, and he's directed many of the episodes. So we're going to get into the themes, big ideas, and creative choices that have gone into the series, which is written by a man named Dan Erickson. It's his first outing, and what an impressive outing it is. Severance is also a success for Apple TV. It's reportedly generated $200 million for the streamer. We'll talk about his experience working with the tech giant, get his views on how tech money is impacting Hollywood, and how Trump's return could affect the ability of artists to get their stories made.

On that note, our expert question this week comes from Bloomberg reporter Lucas Shaw, who writes a weekly newsletter called Screen Time about the collision of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. So stick around.

Ad Break - Various Speakers:

Ad Voice 4: Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

Ad Voice 5: Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn. From talking about sports to discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them. But it's not just person-to-person. It's the same connection that's needed in business. And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing: finding the right people, making the right connections. But instead of spending hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals. According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company roles, seniority, skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash pivotpod. That's linkedin.com slash pivotpod. Terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn ads.

Ad Voice 6: The pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. Crafted with our signature espresso and real pumpkin sauce, then topped with whipped cream, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The PSL. Get it while it's hot or iced. Only at Starbucks.

[Interview begins]

Kara Swisher: Ben S., welcome and thanks for being on On.

Ben Stiller: Hi, Kara S.

Kara Swisher: Hi, Kara S. That's right. That's obviously a Severance reference for people who don't know. This show is about a world in which you can become a different person during working hours. The person is called your innie, and it is you, but your brain wiped of all the details of your outie life. So the innie is you, but not really you. It's without a lot of information or background. I'm just curious, have you ever thought about what your innie would be like?

Ben Stiller: You know, recently I've been thinking about it actually. I think the innies are more innocent. They're less corrupted by life experience. So I guess my innie would be a little bit more fun-loving, innocent, playful. Though I think I am still playful in certain situations. But I do feel like I'd probably be maybe a little less sort of hunched and stressed.

Kara Swisher: Well, it's interesting because some people's innies are not like that on the show. Like Helly's is quite angry, right? She's instantly angry, and her outie is also angry in a different way.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, I mean, I think Helly is rebellious and curious and not a rule follower. She's got a lot of... I don't know if it's necessarily anger as much as this questioning of authority and not taking things at face value and accepting them just because they tell us we should accept them.

Kara Swisher: Right, so you wonder where that comes from. Because a lot of them do accept things, and then they suddenly get rebellious pretty quickly. All of them, by reading books or going down the hall to see a potential boyfriend or whatever, they lose their... they become outies pretty quickly, I would say.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, we looked at it sort of like the first season, these outies were sort of kids. They're pretty young. Mark's only probably like two years old, and Irving's maybe was there a few more years. But they're kind of innocent and childlike to a certain extent, but also have developed personalities. As the season evolved, and as the second season is starting to evolve, I think they're kind of becoming more adolescents and more self-empowered and questioning authority. So I think there's a maturation that's happening with them slowly.

Kara Swisher: Right. And a cynicism that goes with it because they're beginning to see things. So would you ever get severed? I'm just curious.

Ben Stiller: I was talking about it with my wife, Amanda. Would you let it happen? And she said it would be impossible to sever me because I'd be the same irritating person. I don't know if I'd want to be totally cut off from part of my life experience. In retrospect, when I look back at painful situations I've been in or things that have happened in life that didn't feel good, I could imagine not wanting to go through that pain. But I also think that one of the ideas of the show is this questioning of what you can actually cut off. We all have to deal with everything on some level.

I think it's also what I was really attracted to when I first read the script. There are so many different ideas of what Severance could be a metaphor for. I think we all do sever to a certain extent when we check out. If you have a drink, or you take a gummy, or you watch a TV show, or if you go on your phone. We all find ways to cope with the everyday torrent of stuff that's coming at us in life.

Kara Swisher: Right. It's also... I go to hardware stores and browse. I do. I love them.

Ben Stiller: [Laughs]

Kara Swisher: So to be clear, you're not the writer of Severance, but you're executive producer and directed quite a lot of the episodes. You have been the driver of it, it feels like. You were supposed to star in it, and you said you prefer to either direct or act, but not both. So what attracted you to it and the writer, Dan Erickson?

Ben Stiller: Honestly, the script came into our production company. It was a spec script, a script sent as a writing sample. Jackie Cohn, who worked at our company at the time, read it, and she gave it to me. I read it and I was like, "This is great. It's a great writing sample. And also, is anybody doing this show?" It was so unique. The tone, the dialogue. It reminded me of shows that I'd seen before, but it felt like its own thing.

I was one of the ideas bandied about to be in it, but really the second I read it, I was like, "This is Adam Scott." I felt a desire to make it. Sometimes it's hard to analyze what draws you to something. Sometimes I think it's something subconscious you don't necessarily know, but you have a feeling for it. I've tried to listen to that over the years, going with my gut feeling about something and not even knowing what it is. I just thought it was good. I thought I wanted to see it. I could see it in my head and wanted to make it happen.

Kara Swisher: What was the thing about it? Because if it reminded you... by the way, you are the voice of Kier Egan, right?

Ben Stiller: I am the voice of Kier Egan in the... I guess it's episode eight. The weird video game. When you hit 100% and you get the little video of Kier on the mountaintop. It's not actually an actor playing Kier because we have the voice of the real Kier Egan that Mark Geller portrays when you see him. That's who Kier Egan is when you see him.

I think it was the mix of humor and weirdness and the tone of the humor, which related to a lot of comedies I loved. The office banter, this feeling of this weird sort of movie like Office Space or Parks and Rec or The Office. That genre of office workplace comedy where a lot of the humor is based in everyday stuff. But then there was this other layer: these people don't know who they are, where they are, what they're doing, why they're doing it.

Kara Swisher: Right. It's sort of like you put Mary Tyler Moore in an absurdist Sartre play or something. A little bit of No Exit, I guess. A lot of friends of mine are like, "Oh, I don't want to watch it. It's too scary. It's a thriller." I'm like, "No, it's a comedy." But it's also sci-fi, it's romantic, it's dystopian, it's absurd. You've called it a workplace comedy.

Ben Stiller: I feel like it's rooted in the workplace comedy genre. Then it also has these aspects of thriller, but also like 70s style thrillers, and also the weird Twilight Zone vibe to it. To me, that was what was exciting: it's a combination of all these different things. When you see something like that where you haven't seen it before, but in some way it triggers these ideas for you, it makes you want to lean into it.

Dan had never had anything produced before. I had obviously worked for a long time. So he and I sort of partnered up. It's always been his vision, but I think we really collaborated a lot in terms of the feeling and the vibe of it and the direction of the story as we looked at building it out from this pilot that he'd written.

Kara Swisher: It also has a... I don't know how old this guy is, but do you remember one of the last Planet of the Apes, like beyond the... not beyond, when they're sort of in Century City?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, that might be Battle or Conquest.

Kara Swisher: Conquest, I don't know. It had that really cheap feel, but also in those weird places.

Ben Stiller: Well, these are formative movies for me, the Planet of the Apes movies. I went to the Lowe's 84th Street Cinema and watched the Battle for the Planet of the Apes marathon where they go from Planet of the Apes all the way through Conquest or whatever. So yeah, that's deeply rooted in my DNA of things I love to watch.

Kara Swisher: Or Omega Man. It had a little Omega Man.

Ben Stiller: Omega Man, for sure. With Charlton Heston.

Kara Swisher: Yeah. A little bit of Logan's Run-ish.

Ben Stiller: Logan's Run-ish.

Kara Swisher: So there's also a sense in the moment right now that big tech controls us, but this is about big corporations controlling us, which is not an uncommon trope. There have been a million movies about that. In this case, it's with cooperation, though not full disclosure, which is what tech is like right now in a lot of ways.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, I mean, technically Lumen is sort of a med tech company. They go back to the 1860s and 70s when Kier Egan founded it. It's one of those companies that does a lot of things and you shouldn't quite know everything that they do. Obviously the severed workers have no idea what they do there. I always think that's interesting when you see the characters having to talk, especially Mark in the first season when he just talks about supposedly being a corporate archivist or something. He has no idea what he's up to.

I think that idea of people who are working for giant corporations with tech, who actually knows what they're really working towards? I don't know about that world that much, but it seems to me...

Kara Swisher: Well, it's a maximization of "what is work even for?" What's the idea of what work is even for when you're just a cog in a larger picture?

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I think that goes back to human nature. We all want to work. We all want to have something to do with our lives. Then there are certain people who have ideas of doing things... who knows what they want to do. You could pick any tech billionaire. What are their goals and their aims? But ultimately, we're all just people who want to work and be happy and fill our time with something we think is meaningful. It can be really distressing when you're doing something you think is good or meaningful to you, but the overall goal of this corporation you're working for might be totally nefarious.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, the goal of the tech billionaires is fascism, as it turned out. And greed, right? It's all about greed.

Ben Stiller: Well, power.

Kara Swisher: Power is where it is. Or they know better, and they will tell us what to do. And that's what this corp, Lumen, is like too. "We know, we care," but then they don't actually care in any way.

So there's a lot about the unconscious as a model of knowing. Separating you from doing severed, but not entirely severed, since a lot of it creeps into the consciousness. Like the happiness he has in one world and deep unhappiness in the other, and the idea that it would seep into it. What does that mean to have two senses of knowing? And how does it impact directing the actors? Because the actors obviously have to be two different people when you're doing it.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. To me, again, it's one of the really interesting aspects of the premise of the show: how much of a person can be cut off from? If it's your brain, if it's your mind, there are technologies that are approaching trying to do something like this. But what is it that can cross over if you don't remember anything about your life? What are the innate human desires or characteristics that make you a person? That's constantly what we're looking at and asking in the show.

For the actors, it's great because that's a question they can ask in literally every scene. They can wonder about how much of this is coming through. My feeling for Dylan and Irving: if they're having a conversation, how much of Dylan's outie life is coming through for Dylan, even if it's not what the scene is about? For Adam Scott playing Mark, he's constantly going back and forth between that. I think that's what's really interesting about the show too: finding those places where something transcends the severance barrier, an emotion or a feeling.

There's a time in episode... I forget which episode, season one, where Dylan says basically, "Do you think love transcends the severance barrier?" That's the question. What transcends? When we suppress feelings, how much can you really keep out of your experience? It goes to the questions of post-traumatic stress disorder, suppressed memories, repressed memories, all those things.

Kara Swisher: Years ago, I had a friend who was in one of those psychiatric things where they did therapy every day for hours and hours, trying to find out all about themselves and figuring out where suppressed memories were. They said, "Have you ever been to therapy?" I said, "Never. I just don't want to know that much about myself." I said something offhand, which was probably rude to someone who's in intense therapy. They were a pretty unhappy person, I would say. And they said to me, "You're blocking." And I said, "It's working because I'm happy and you're not." Which was kind of an interesting moment. I thought about it watching this. I thought it'd be really interesting to watch this if you're a therapist of some sort too. Because everything's about the conscious and unconscious and what bleeds into each other.

Ben Stiller: As a person, I've been in therapy and I've talked a lot. That question of how much talking about your past or memories and issues... there are questions about how much that really can help. Alternate therapies that are much more in the body and not really just about analyzing. I think that resonates because I feel like a lot of this stuff is internal. There are even questions about generational trauma that people talk about now. It's really interesting because you think about what is cellularly in our bodies that we carry with us.

Kara Swisher: Well, except in this case, they use an advanced piece of technology to create this severance, right? To create the suppressing of the unconscious or the conscious. But even though it's an advanced technology happening here, it seems like everyone in the show is living in the 70s, as you talked about. It's a retro set. The costumes feel older on all of them, really. Talk a little bit about that, why you wanted the look and feel. There's also a lot of doubling and duality: people walking together in twos, a theme of two characters playing two different people. Talk about the look and feel, why you had the retro set, and also the duality that's happening visually.

Ben Stiller: In terms of the outie world and the innie world, what I thought that Dan had written in the pilot was a very sort of generic kind of world. I think he was commenting on that in a way: what working for a big corporation could kind of turn you into. That sort of blandness, that corporate blandness, I felt we should mirror in the outside world. I didn't want to have any actual reference points like CNN or brand names or things when you saw the news. The idea was we don't quite know where or when this is. It's kind of now, but we don't want to have any touchstones, even in the technology.

I grew up in the seventies. I do feel like ever since cell phones and smartphones were invented, it's really changed our lives, obviously, but also storytelling. So many things you'd have to do before to tell a story, you'd have to go and do research or whatever, and now you just get on your phone. It's not very cinematic. That's why I like a prison story too. Inside a prison, you don't have access to that technology. Prisoners aren't allowed. In a way, Severance has a prison aspect to it.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, it's got the Stanford Prison Experiment vibe to it.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I think that world should be as interesting and off and generic in its own way as the innie world, the outie world. That's why we gravitated towards that. The duality aspect is inherent in the theme. So it's a natural tendency for us to look for in the imagery, because it's telling the story in a way, and it lends itself to that. I think that's part of the visual world of the show. When you have a clear theme and an idea that's really specific, you want to stick with that theme and let everything build off of that so it feels organic and not forced. That's the great thing about this idea: it allows for that.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I went back and looked at the movements, and it's all duality. It's really interesting. But it also has a level of suspense since there is what the viewer knows and what two different people know. And then the pervasive sense of withholding information in a total surveillance environment. There's a lot of misinformation happening here, largely by the Lumen executives who are not severed, by the way, who know both sides.

Ben Stiller: Right. We are constantly dealing with that question all the time. The question of how much Lumen knows, how much they're listening to, how much they're seeing within the severed world. I think there's always a question of how much they're letting happen, how much they know is happening, how sometimes the technology isn't quite great there. There are places they can find like a closet or something. That's a specific aspect of the reality of the show. If we were doing this as a modern day show, everybody would be like, "There's no way you could do that because they would have microphones everywhere." But I think there's something to the sort of clunky nature of this corporation that is kind of fun.

We don't have any... there's one security person in the first season, Grainer. Early on, we experimented and thought about having security guards on the floor. Any time we ever brought security guards in, it always felt to me like it turned into a Star Trek episode or something.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Stiller: There was something about it. We realized that the more we don't tell, the more we don't show, the more the audience has a chance to fill it in themselves. That's always been a little bit of the question as I put the show out into the world. When we were making the first season, we'd made all nine episodes and nobody had seen it. It's like, "Oh, I hope people will buy this conceit." You have to buy into it. But I feel like those aren't the questions I'm as interested in as opposed to the greater themes of the show.

Kara Swisher: Absolutely. I mean, it's also a return to work story, which is sort of in the news right now, this idea of return to work. Did you understand that at the time? You had a COVID period in here when you were making it.

Ben Stiller: Not at all. The first season we made starting right when COVID started. We were delayed actually six months in production because of it. When the show was finished and people were starting to go back to work, a writer wrote about it as like, "Oh, this is one of the first return to work shows." That's purely happenstance. It was just the timing of how the show came out. It seemed like both the aspect of being sort of severed from everybody else in the world, as we were. And that weirdness even making the show where the actors were... first season, everybody was in full PPE and face masks.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I don't remember any of that. Blocking is working. Someone's like, "Do you remember that?" I'm like, "I don't. Do you know that Trump was president before?" I don't remember that. It's not going very well right now. We'll get to that in a minute. But no, blocking, it's working.

I want to get into the business of this in a second. But do you have a character you particularly vibe with on the show?

Ben Stiller: I really enjoy all the characters equally. I like them. Adam is the key, I think, because he's the protagonist.

Kara Swisher: Milchick. That guy.

Ben Stiller: Milchick, yeah. I'm excited for this season with Milchick too, because I feel like he's an enigma and he can be scary. But there are so many different aspects to who he is that make him a really fascinating character. Everybody works for this corporation. At the end of the day, there's a chain of command. I think that's something that's interesting to us in the show: how even if it's this weird kind of world or these possibly scary characters that work at the company, they're also working. So they have to deal with all of the office politics too.

Kara Swisher: The defiant jazz scene was my favorite in the entire show. When they were dancing. So awkward. I've been at that party. I've been at that office party where they have cake in the office. They do pineapple sear.

Ben Stiller: [Laughs]

Kara Swisher: The pineapple fruit plate as a way of luring people back. It's sort of the shitty little perks that you get that, in contrast to what these people have experienced, that's huge for them. Though they are trying it in season two on the outies. But it's funny to me that when they have an office party, it's still just them. There's nobody else there. So it's just the lights change, but it's still the same four people mingling with each other.

Ben Stiller: Right. That was one of my favorite setups that we had. The idea of, "Okay, where is this going to go?" All of a sudden, when you get this next level perk, they're going to change the color of the lights in the room and you're going to dance. The combination of... Milchick is obviously the best dancer there.

Kara Swisher: Such a good dancer.

Ben Stiller: An amazing dancer, Tramell Tillman. And Adam, the best white guy dancing I think I've ever seen.

Kara Swisher: Quite good. He didn't do his biting his lip enough. The white man overbiting. Save that Billy Crystal, right?

Ben Stiller: [Laughs] Yeah. To me, the weirdness of that moment is kind of like... it's motivated because it's a party. It's a perk. You understand why they're doing it, but it's also just so weird. It's really fun to be able to explore that.

Kara Swisher: We'll be back in a minute.

Ad Break - Various Speakers:

Ad Voice 7: In business, they say you can have better, cheaper, or faster, but you only get to pick two. What if you could have all three at the same time? That's exactly what Cohere, Thomson Reuters, and Specialized Bikes have. Since they upgraded to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is the blazing fast platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs, where you can run any workload in a high availability, consistently high-performance environment, and spend less than you would with other clouds. How is it faster? OCI's block storage gives you more operations per second. Cheaper? OCI costs up to 50% less for compute, 70% less for storage, and 80% less for networking. Better?

Ad Voice 7: In test after test, OCI customers report lower latency and higher bandwidth versus other clouds. This is the cloud built for AI and all your biggest workloads. Right now with zero commitment, try OCI for free. Head to oracle.com slash vox. That's oracle.com slash vox.

Ad Voice 4: Support for the show comes from Mercury. What if banking did more? Because to you, it's more than an invoice. It's your hard work becoming revenue. It's more than a wire. It's payroll for your team. It's more than a deposit. It's landing your fundraise. The truth is, banking can do more. Mercury brings all the ways you use money into a single product that feels extraordinary to use. Visit mercury.com to join over 200,000 entrepreneurs who use Mercury to do more for their business. Mercury. Banking that does more.

Ad Voice 5: Change is always happening. But no matter what changes in five years, there's one thing that will stay the same. The price of your internet. With the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you get five years of the most reliable Wi-Fi with our best equipment included for a price that stays exactly the same. Restrictions apply. New residential customers only. Taxes and fees extra and subject to change. Most reliable Wi-Fi based on OpenSignal Awards USA. Fixed Broadband Experience Report, August 2024.

Kara Swisher: So I want to talk a little bit about the business. Have you been surprised how popular it's gotten? I know *Succession* got more popular in the second season, right? And *Severance* was Apple's first new series order after the company launched its streaming service. It was trying to do an HBO thing, that was very clear. A place for big talent to come and make what they want with big budgets. Now, *Severance* is reportedly costing a lot of money, and there have been cuts at Apple pulling the budget as the second season was being produced all across the way. But at the same time, Parade Analytics was noting that you might be generating $200 million for Apple in terms of subscriptions and everything else. And at the same time, you're about to maybe announce your third season. Talk a little bit about the calculations here of how you look at it, because it used to be so much easier. Now, you made mostly movies over TV shows. But talk a little bit about the calculations, because it's a weird economic environment at the same time.

Ben Stiller: Honestly, yeah, I know very little about it. It's a weird world to be in. From the beginning, it was a new, strange experience because when we started developing the show, Apple wasn't even up yet. Someone called up and said, "Yeah, Apple's going to do a streaming service too." And I remember laughing, going like, "Okay, everybody's doing streaming services. This is crazy." We went out and pitched the show to different places—HBO, all these places—and Apple was the only one that bought it. And they weren't even up yet.

Kara Swisher: What did the others say about it?

Ben Stiller: Well, you know, no one ever really tells you. It's Hollywood. We'll get to that, yeah. They say, "We loved it, it just wasn't for us." But that's just the way it is. And that's par for the course. But they said yes to it. And then it was like, "Okay, we're going to develop this thing for Apple TV." That's weird to think of. Then a couple of years go by, and all of a sudden they're up and running and we're a show that's in production for them. Honestly, I had no sense of what success would be other than I hope people watch it. And they don't really tell you the analytics.

Kara Swisher: Oh, they don't.

Ben Stiller: No, they don't ever tell you the analytics. No, they show us graphs and charts, but without numbers attached to them. And it's weird. I think that's weird for any creative person, especially when you're used to—you make a movie, you know exactly how many people went to see it on opening night, how much money it made. A show, you get Nielsen ratings. So in a way, it took the pressure off of us because there wasn't some number we were waiting to hear. All we wanted to hear was like, "Yeah, we're happy. A lot of people are watching it." And you want people to watch the show. But the first season, we were lucky enough to get very positive critical response, which hardly ever happens in my life. And I was so happy about that. And it seemed like people were watching it, but I didn't know how many people. Then we went into our process of making the second season, which got hit by the strike, and it took much longer than we wanted. So coming back after three years in this culture, it's like 100 years in terms of any guarantee that people are still going to be there. But in the meantime, Apple had grown. They'd built out their subscriber base, and I think they also really get the show, have always gotten the show. I thought they did a great job of marketing it the first season in terms of the aesthetic of it with the show and Apple. And it always felt like it looks like Apple headquarters.

Kara Swisher: But go ahead.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, it does. And it wasn't intentional. I've never been to Apple headquarters. I've seen aerial shots, but we really designed it. But it always felt like it fits on Apple. And then the second season, they really put a lot behind it. I think they believed in it, and they had money invested in it, too. And luckily, our core fan base really was still there for it. I felt like it could go either way. It could be, "It's three years and we waited for this? No thanks." Or, "Nobody cares, it's back." Or it could be, "Hey, it was worth the wait." And that's totally out of your control when you're making something. So you just put your head down and do it.

Kara Swisher: So you don't know. I mean, that Parade Analytics article is pretty accurate. $200 million for Apple in terms of subscription. You don't know.

Ben Stiller: Yes. I saw that article, but that's all.

Kara Swisher: Does that change your going to Apple saying, "I want more money"?

Ben Stiller: No. Because honestly, I feel like they've been great. I have no complaints. They've gotten behind the show. These things are so complicated. I was really happy to see that article because I didn't know. But I also feel like they've always been like, "Yeah, we love the show. We're behind it." It's never been like a thing.

Kara Swisher: Did you have any problems working for a tech company?

Ben Stiller: You mean in terms of my own sort of moral?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, versus a Hollywood company. This is a whole new change with these tech companies, Amazon and Apple.

Ben Stiller: For me, the concern was not knowing what Apple TV Plus would be. Whether or not they were serious about it, whether or not we would be looked at as a real show early on. That's also the not knowing what they had really planned for and what they were trying to do, other than them saying they wanted to make really good shows.

Kara Swisher: Right, which they have.

Ben Stiller: But you do hear, of course, everyone's like, "Ultimately it's a phone company. They're making phones."

Kara Swisher: Like Amazon. The creator of *Transparent* called me once and I said, "You're selling toilet paper. That's what you're doing."

Ben Stiller: Yeah. And look, for a creative person who grew up in my generation, it's weird to see that Amazon Prime is on there. When you're shopping for Amazon stuff and you can just click on that and watch movies and shows, it takes away something of the specialness of movies when you look at it that way. And then there's the other aspect of what's informing their decisions based on their analytics and the level of information that they're getting that will create for them ideas of what they think they want to produce for their platform.

Kara Swisher: So what are the chances of a third season? You did get Tim Cook in an ad. That was a good sign.

Ben Stiller: He's a big ham, by the way. He pretends he's not a ham. He's a ham. He seemed to like it. Yeah. I think the chances are really good. For us, we just want to be able to tell the story in the number of seasons that it should be to finish the story. That's the upside of working in this era. We're not a show that has to keep going because it's a network hit show. They're saying we need 22 episodes and you got to keep doing until the ratings drop. That pressure is not there. I think that is something that gets lost a little bit in all the sort of weird negatives of this world, too. You have that creative freedom.

Kara Swisher: So at the same time, there's the Netflix phenomenon. They regularly beat all the other streamers, more top 10 shows combined than all of them, despite the quality and reviews that Apple gets. They'll pop up anything, Netflix, really pretty much. Now, you guys have been doing a bunch of marketing. You had the season two pop-up in Grand Central Station that was hysterical, where you put them in a glass box and had people do their work in the glass box, which was great.

Ben Stiller: For three hours they were there.

Kara Swisher: For three hours. And you were outside. People were shooting pictures of you at the same time. How do you—does everything now go around Netflix in that regard? Or is streaming sort of starting to settle? I don't know in terms of how it's all settling out.

Ben Stiller: It's a crazy new world. I know Netflix has changed everything. The amount of shows that they produce, movies that they make, the level of what they're putting in and spending. It's just changed everything. So everybody who makes stuff wants their stuff to be seen. So it's that sort of push-pull where if you have something on Netflix, you know that you have a chance for more people in the world to see it than probably ever. But it also could just go down the queue very quickly and never even get any attention. So that's a real thing, too.

Kara Swisher: You're scared of the queue?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, sure. Who wouldn't be, feeling like, "Oh, I don't want to just go down." But it's such a crazy world now that the cultural moment that you have for something—I actually like being on Apple because they don't drop everything at once. We get to have an episode every week. And I think for our show, that benefits our show.

Kara Swisher: It does.

Ben Stiller: Because we get a chance for people to chew on it, to think about it, to talk about it, to go online and go back and forth. To want it.

Kara Swisher: And to want it.

Ben Stiller: And I like that. Maybe that's just a generational thing. I'm just an old guy who's like, "Oh, I remember when shows would come on every week." But *Succession* was like that, right? And you'd look forward to that. I think it's just the new world we're in. But yeah, Netflix has turned the movie business upside down. And it's still trying to find its way, I think, in terms of what defines a movie. I'm hoping, and I really do believe, we're going to get back to what people went to the movies for besides spectacle and giant IP and all that stuff. I feel like that will come back around.

Kara Swisher: Well, you've made both types of movies, right?

Ben Stiller: Sure. Yeah. But back in the day a little bit, and I haven't done it for a while. In movies, it's hard. The thing is, the movies had that version of it where you have an opening weekend, and if your movie didn't do well on the opening weekend, a wide release, then it would go away pretty quickly. So it's kind of the same version of being on the queue at Netflix. It's just kind of on steroids. Even more existential.

Kara Swisher: In that vein, there's a question not from me. Every episode we ask an outside person to record a question. Here's yours.

Ad Voice 6: Hi, Ben. My name is Lucas Shaw, and I'm the managing editor for media and entertainment at Bloomberg News. My big question is, following strikes and the broader pullback on spending in Hollywood, many executives, producers, and creative people say this is the worst time to work in Hollywood in their lives. What's another moment in your career where your peers had so much existential dread? Thanks.

Ben Stiller: Oh, wow. That's presuming you have existential dread. I mean, existential dread is something that creative people have, I think, all the time.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Stiller: And that could be the generational trauma that I have, too. I grew up around that. It's not a very secure business being an actor or a creative person. I can't remember a time when people were as off balance as they are now. Everything has changed in such a big way. I'm trying to think of when VHS happened or something like that. But it's all been thrown out there in a way that we don't know. I don't think the people who are making things know where it's going to land either. So they're trying to figure it out. And there's a lot of fear because those people want to keep their jobs, which I understand. But they have to make these choices based on what they think the audiences are doing. So, yeah, I can't remember a time like this. It didn't feel so.

Kara Swisher: You had noted in the *New York Times* interview, though, that when a decision is made, it's never explained to the creative person, or usually, if it is, it's not usually the truth, et cetera.

Ben Stiller: Well, yeah, that's just sort of old school.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, that's old school.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, it is. People don't ever say—I don't know in any business, because I've only done this—but people tell you when they reject an idea, if they always tell you the actual honest reason why they're doing it. But in this business, people want to keep their relationships with each other and they want to stay connected because they don't know what the next thing is going to be. And that's just always been a part of Hollywood. But I do think you're right. The bosses don't know what's going to happen. That's the problem. They really don't know.

Kara Swisher: And going back to existential, Jed, coming up with the guardrails for use of AI in filmmaking are important points of negotiation, the actors' and writers' strikes. We've talked about this. There was some recent controversy with the Oscar-nominated film *The Brutalist*. They used AI to correct the Hungarian accents of its lead actors. Do you think about AI's potential impact on the industry? Are you thrilled by it? Is there a line in your head that shouldn't be crossed when applying? I suspect you might lean into it. I don't know why I think that. Maybe.

Ben Stiller: I think it's so unknown. It's scary to think about what people could do with it. The potential, what is actually possible to do. I do believe that creative human beings are always going to be what people want to connect with and see their stuff. There are little places where AI—I feel like almost what's going on with CGI really, in terms of visual effects, is basically into that world anyway at this point.

Kara Swisher: Yes, that's correct.

Ben Stiller: Using those tools. There are little ways that—to be honest, I'd say like, "Oh, you're doing ADR," which is when you're doing looping extra lines or something, and an actor's not available. If the actor said, "Hey, it's okay, you can use my voice and we can get the words that you need to put in because I'm not available to do it because I'm doing another movie." Something like that. Those are kind of mundane, practical things that I think would be really helpful. I love *The Brutalist*. I don't in any way look at that as making that movie lesser in any way at all, honestly. I also am very impressed with that movie, as a lot of people are, because of the price it was made for. But the unfortunate thing is that a movie like that has to be made for such a low price.

Kara Swisher: Low price, yeah.

Ben Stiller: It's hard because I know how much creative people will really stretch themselves to do what they want to do creatively. And it's really hard to get the opportunity to make a movie that's not something that everybody in the world is going to want to see. Yet those are the movies that we celebrate with awards and that move us. So what I feel for are the creative people who are forced to really sacrifice a lot so that they can get something made. And now whether AI could in some way help that, I don't think that's a bad thing. But where the rules are around it—the idea of somebody taking your image and then being able to do whatever they want with it is very concerning to me when I see what could be done.

Kara Swisher: Well, they take your image a lot. *Zoolander*, all your different parts. I've often seen that.

Ben Stiller: That also happened. That's always happening, that kind of thing. I think ever since the internet.

Kara Swisher: But I do think it's concerning when you see in the political world how political ads can be created and people doing things that they didn't do. That's really scary. We'll be back in a minute.

Ad Break - Various Speakers:

Ad Voice 1: This episode is brought to you by FXX and Hulu. An all-new season of *Futurama* is back, blending heartfelt moments with razor-sharp humor while accidentally saving the day. The Planet Express crew is back, defying gravity and common sense. From the creator of *The Simpsons* comes 10 new episodes, where the romance is hotter, the threats are bigger, and the action hits harder. Don't miss the all-new season of *Futurama*. Watch it Mondays on FXX or streaming on Hulu.

Ad Voice 2: Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses it. Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of $45 per three-month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only. Then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

Ad Voice 3: Tron Ares has arrived. I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent. You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th. What are you? My world is coming to destroy yours. But I can help you. The war for our world begins in IMAX. *Tron: Ares*. Rated PG-13. Maybe inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.

Kara Swisher: So you recently joined me in a not-so-exclusive club. We've both been called names by Elon Musk. I am seething with hate and an asshole, in case you're interested. I'm not going to repeat what he said about you. You know what he said about you. We're not repeating that word because I'm a good girl, okay? I used to when I was a kid. We don't do it anymore. But he seemed upset that you endorsed Kamala Harris. And then after you wondered in an interview whether *Tropic Thunder* could be made today—and I wish there was, as you know, I'm desperate for *Tropic Thunder 2*—he wanted to be more upset about how wokeness has supposedly ruined comedy. Talk a little bit about this moment.

Ben Stiller: That makes no sense to me. I have no idea what that means.

Kara Swisher: Well, do you think he's on the up and up now these days? Because he makes so much sense about everything he does.

Ben Stiller: I have very little interest in his whole thing and what he's doing.

Kara Swisher: So tell me why, because he was retweeting a *Daily Mail* headline that read, "Ben Stiller says woke America killed edgier comedy." That's not what you said at all, from what I could read.

Ben Stiller: No. Yeah, that was not at all. It's the opposite of what I was saying.

Kara Swisher: Yeah.

Ben Stiller: I don't know why he has so much time on his hands that he's retweeting something that was written about me. I know he really likes *Tropic Thunder*.

Kara Swisher: Great.

Ben Stiller: Good for him. But I think after that, the Nazi salute, the double Nazi salute. I'm just not into it. Never was into it. And I think what's happening, honestly, not that anybody needs my opinion, but what's happening in terms of him being so close to the president and all the questions that that brings up in terms of conflicts of interest, all of that stuff is really, really concerning.

Kara Swisher: It is, absolutely. The two of them together is very tough. And what he cares about, pop culture and all that stuff, it's like, who gives a shit? He wanted you to agree with him that *Tropic Thunder* couldn't be made. "Isn't that awful?" It goes with the narrative of, "Isn't everybody trying to stop us because we're the greatest victims on earth? Us rich people are the greatest victims."

Ben Stiller: I think that's down that lane, something like that. I don't think it makes anybody a victim. What the temperature is in terms of what movies are getting made or not—the reality is, yeah, sure, the environment is different and it would be tougher to get it made. I don't know if it could get made or not. I think it would be harder to get it made. But that doesn't mean I'm commenting on the state of our culture.

Kara Swisher: He wanted you to agree with him, I think.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't.

Kara Swisher: But you don't. Okay. But one of the things that people are worried about is a Trump chill in Hollywood. Now, obviously, that's happening in tech. Everybody showed up at the inauguration, all the tech richest people in the world. *New York Magazine* recently quoted an anonymous producer who said, "There's more fear in the executive suites now than there's ever been." There seems to be a pulling back. Disney pulled a trans character, for example. Is there any indication for you that Hollywood executives would be more hesitant to fund projects with political messages? Quite a few of yours have them. Now, besides sports that you endlessly blue sky about, which I don't understand any of your references, you're also very political. You don't shy away from it. I believe they're a basketball team in any case. You are political, but do you think about that at all?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, sure. I think about it. After October 7th happened—

Kara Swisher: This is the news reel.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. I was trying to think of, "Well, what should I say?" And I realized I'm not going to be able to express myself in a tweet or a BlueSky post. I don't want to go into that arena of having to distill some idea down into a thought that then people are going to debate. So to me, it's more a question of where do I express myself and what do I do? I don't think having to legislate all this stuff on your phone all the time, as much as sometimes there's an instinct to, that's not something that I'm going to do well with, or it's just not going to make me happy to do that. That's why I wrote a little something about October 7th and just put it out there because I wanted to express myself. I just think the social media debate and what it turns into never really goes well.

Kara Swisher: What about the art itself? Do you think how it will be impacted by the time we're in, if you could look forward? I know I interviewed Rachel Maddow recently, and we talked a bit about her podcast about Nixon's corrupt first vice president, Spiro Agnew, called *Bagman*. It's being adapted into a feature film you were reportedly set to direct. Do you think about doing—are you directing that? Is that correct?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, I'm trying to get that movie made. We almost got it made a couple years ago. I think it's more important now. Look, I think artists are incredibly inspired now to speak out in creative ways about what's going on in our country. My daughter's an actor. She just graduated from drama school. She's a writer and she wants to make movies. And she said, "All I want to do right now is make stories about women and what they're going through because of what's going on in our country right now." So I think people are really inspired, and you're going to see a lot of amazing art come out of it.

Kara Swisher: Does it make you want to do more? Because *Angels in America* came out of Reagan, right? It came out of that anger. A lot of that art came out of things.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, I think you have to be true to who you are in terms of what you create. But yes, for sure. I think we all have to look at ourselves and say, "Okay, what message are we putting out there with whatever it is we make?" But even if it's a comedy or drama, whatever it is, it doesn't all have to be political. It has to be true to who you are. We're all affected by the world that we're in. So it's hopefully going to be a reflection of the experience that you're having in some way. I don't put that pressure on people to have to go out and do something. You have to do what feels right for you.

Kara Swisher: Is there something that inspires you now at this moment? Because I don't feel like you're going to be making *Night at the Museum 7* at this point, or whatever we're on.

Ben Stiller: Whatever we're on. Well, honestly, I still think it's good to have stuff that you can watch that can make you laugh and give you a retreat.

Kara Swisher: Oh, your heist movie. What's it called, *Heist*? Oh, *Tower Heist*. *Tower Heist* was so good.

Ben Stiller: You know what? We shot that in the Trump Tower.

Kara Swisher: You did. I know you did.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. And the movie was originally called *Trump Tower Heist*, but Trump wanted them to pay him for the use of his name. So they changed it to *Tower Heist*.

Kara Swisher: Oh, wow. Well, I don't think anybody ever heard that. Oh, wow. Good to know. Sorry.

Ben Stiller: Yeah. But no, look, I, like many people after the election who didn't vote for Trump, kind of wanted to just sort of hide for a moment and not have to deal with the reality. And now it's sort of this moment in time where it's like, "Okay, this is the reality we're in. It's not the first term. We have to look at it, look at ourselves, and do what we feel is right to be who we want to be in this moment." So I think that should all be what you're expressing, and it should all be part of what you want to say. So yeah, that movie, *Bagman*, I'd love to get that movie made right now because I feel like it tells the story of what happens when people do the right thing in the face of somebody who's trying to go past the bounds of what their power is.

Kara Swisher: Right, and Spiro Agnew is quite a character.

Ben Stiller: He's such a fantastic character. That was a great podcast. I like all of Rachel's podcasts a lot.

Kara Swisher: Me too. So my last question where we go is this idea of influences you now, or perhaps before. I know your mother and father, the great Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. She died in 2015, I think that's right, and he died in 2020. You're working on a documentary about them right now. Can you talk a little bit about this? And I imagine they gave you a lot of advice about entertainment, business, and storytelling over the years. Is there anything about their careers from your perspective that endures and what influences you today?

Ben Stiller: Yeah, I mean, they worked together as a comedy team. They got married in 1953, and they weren't making any money as actors, both separately trying to get work. Then my dad came up with this idea of them doing a comedy act together about who they were. Then we were born, my sister and I, and so grew up around it all. For me, it was exploring in the movie this life of living in a household that was constantly part of their creative process because they would work at home. They would write together, they would perform, come home, and be parents and actors. It was all sort of intermingled. Then, of course, you grow up and I got married and had kids and became an actor. And my kids want to be actors. I was sort of looking at what is it inside of us that the creative process is and how that connects with relationships that we have in our life when you do this kind of thing. When you go to an office job, you go to the office, then you want to maybe sever and not think about it, right? But in a life where you're a creative person, it melds through and it's always part of who you are. So it affected my parents' marriage. They stayed married for 60-plus years, but there was a lot of stress and tension in there. I was able to—my dad recorded a lot of stuff, audio recordings, Super 8 film, and he recorded them rehearsing. And then sometimes the tape recorder would keep going, and they'd get into an argument or they'd talk about what was going on in their life. So I was able to take those tapes and kind of see something that I hadn't seen in their private life together and how they navigated this relationship and their careers together.

Kara Swisher: And when does that come out?

Ben Stiller: It's going to be Apple, Apple Movies. And it's going to come out later this year, I think.

Kara Swisher: So last question, what then influences you today about doing this from them? What did you come away with?

Ben Stiller: I think I came away with a better understanding of my parents in terms of my dad's creative process in particular because he was very focused on that. And sometimes it sort of took him away from the family in a way, just kind of in his head a little bit. And I think I inherited that from him.

Ben Stiller: And I think it's kind of made me look at my own relationship with my kids and my wife and have a little more perspective on that and maybe kind of less angst about that because, an appreciation of like, okay, we've gotten to this place. Things have not always been perfect, but you keep evolving.

Ben Stiller: And both my parents, I think, were constantly evolving and questioning themselves and looking inward. And I think that's something I got out of it.

Kara Swisher: All right, Ben, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Ben Stiller: Great talking to you. All right. Bye, Kara.

Kara Swisher: On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, Megan Kunane, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics.

Kara Swisher: If you already found the show, you get a pineapple. If not, you get the dance experience, and you do not want that experience. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow.

Kara Swisher: Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.