Ben Stiller Reveals What Lorne Michaels Said to Him When He QuitSNLAfter Only 4 Episodes

Mar. 15, 2025

Ben Stiller on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1989 and in November 2024.Photo:Raymond Bonar/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty ; Maya Dehlin Spach/WireImage

Raymond Bonar/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty ; Maya Dehlin Spach/WireImage

Ben Stilleris looking back on hisextraordinarily short tenure onSaturday Night Live.

As host David Marchese noted on the most recent episode of theNew York TimespodcastThe Interview, Stiller famously only appeared in four episodes of the long-running NBC sketch comedy show in 1989, leaving his job as a writer and featured performer after only five weeks. Marchese asked theSeverancedirector howSNLcreatorLorne Michaelsreacted to his decision to leave.

“He was like, ‘Okay,’ ” Stiller recalled, imitating Michaels’ voice. “ ‘Ben’s gonna do what Ben’s gonna do.’ ”

Mary Tyler Moore and Ben Stiller on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in 1989.Raymond Bonar/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty

Raymond Bonar/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal/Getty

Stiller said that it had been one of his dreams to be onSNL, and looking back, he wasn’t sure how he had the — in Marchese’s words — “gumption” to walk away. “But for whatever reason, I followed that instinct,” he said.

Stiller, of course, went on to star in a string of some of the biggest Hollywood comedies of the late ’90s and early 2000s, includingThere’s Something About Mary(1998),Meet the Parents(2000) andZoolander(2001).

“I would open up a newspaper and [read] ‘Why is Ben Stiller in every movie?’ ” the actor said of that period in his career. “I was just like, ‘I don’t know,’ you know? ‘I’m here. I love doing what I do.’ æ

Stiller added that it’s only in retrospect that he can look back and say “ ‘Wow, there was, like, a thing happening there that, you know, I was fortunate to be a part of.’ But I don’t know what the zeitgeist was.”

“You can look at 2000s comedies now, and go, ‘Okay, they were a specific kind of thing, a tone,’ ” he continued. “And there were a lot of great things in those comedies too that we don’t have now, but I don’t know if you can recreate that now. But at the time, I really wasn’t analyzing it too much. I was kinda just trying to figure out how to navigate it.”

In a follow-up call with Marchese, Stiller expanded on how he feels making comedy has changed since the early 2000s.

“It’s really hard to make a comedy, you know?” he explained. “I think it’s just the freedom, you know, the freedom to, like, not worry about how something was gonna get interpreted. And I do think it was sort of — in a weird way, it was a freer time because there was less analysis given even to the people who were making the comedy. I think it was just, like, kind of a — I don’t wanna say a more innocent time 20 years ago, because it wasn’t that innocent, but weirdly, kind of, it was. You know?”

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Stiller said that his “outlook” changed after theunderperformance of 2016’sZoolander 2. In the years since, he’s shifted toward directing darker, more serious projects like 2018’sEscape at DannemoraandSeverance. But, he said, he still gets offers to do the kind of big comedies he made in the early 2000s — including pitches for a potential fourth installment in theMeet the Parentsseries.

Last month, PEOPLE confirmed that Stiller,Robert De Niro,Blythe DannerandTeri Polowere allin talks to return for another Fockers film, and in his conversation with Marchese, Stiller hinted at what the sequel could look like.

“It came out a couple years ago, I think, that I was, like, the same age as De Niro was when we did the first movie, and kinda like, what would have evolved in that, you know? Now that my character, that Greg would have kids, maybe one of them is getting married. So, it kind of, you know, was an interesting sort of mirror to the first movie,” he said. “If there was something that came together onFockersthat everybody liked that was fun, you know, I’m open to that. But I think maybe for me as a director, my head is in a different place.”

source: people.com