When both your parents are in show business, you get used to being stopped on the street. Just ask Ben Stiller, whose parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, formed a hit comedy duo in the 1960s and '70s.
"My mom usually wouldn't want to talk to people for a long time ... and my dad would talk to people forever," Stiller says. "As kids ... you feel that your parent's attention [is] being taken away from you."
Meara died in 2015 and her husband followed in 2020. After his father's death, Ben Stiller found a stash of audio recordings his dad had made of his conversations and arguments with Meara about their marriage and their act. Those tapes are at the center of Stiller's new documentary about his parents, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.
Stiller says his father was always more committed to comedy than his mother, who studied under Uta Hagen and dreamed of being a serious actor. They had been married for several years, both struggling to make it in show business, when Jerry Stiller had the idea to create short comedy sketches together. "He drew her into doing this comedy act," his son says. "And that changed their lives."
The comedy team of Stiller and Meara would go on to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show more than 30 times. Later, Jerry Stiller co-starred on Seinfeld, playing Frank Costanza, George's father. Meanwhile, Ben Stiller was forging his own path in Hollywood, both as an actor and a filmmaker.
Stiller is currently the executive producer and director of the TV series, Severance, about a company that makes its employees get a procedure on their brain that separates the memories of their home life and the memories of their work life. The premise is almost the direct opposite of the lifestyle his parents modeled while he was growing up.
"Their marriage, their relationship ... was also what their act was about," Stiller says. "So I think that concept of the separation is actually really very interesting to me because it's something I've never had."
Interview highlights
On Jerry Stiller's desire to be loved by everyone
I think I can identify. ... I think most actors have a certain sense of wanting approval. ... He'd talk about it very openly. He said, "I need that love from the audience." It's kind of armchair psychology, but ... he didn't get a lot of nurturing from [his parents] when he was a kid. ... They fought a lot, and they were very poor, and nobody was encouraging him to go into show business. ...
He went to Syracuse University and he performed in plays and he found his people and found this warmth and acceptance in the theater, and he was always connecting with people. I think he loved talking to people. He loved when fans would come up and say hi to him. And it meant something to him, and my mother had a very different relationship with it.
On the fun part of having celebrity parents
I remember when they played nightclubs in New York and that was really exciting for us. We get to stay up late, hang out with the grownups. Interesting, funny people coming in and out of the house. They would have these New Year's Eve parties at their apartment in the late '70s and the '80s that were just amazing. ... As kids, it was really fun to be around. I loved going on sets when they would go out to LA. … To be on the Paramount studios lot ... made me want to make movies. Being around that, it was very clear early on that that's what I wanted to do. It was a lot of fun times and more interesting to my sister and I than school, for sure.
On sneaking out while his parents traveled for work
Our nanny, Hazel, took care of us basically since I think the time that I was probably about 4 years old. She was from Jamaica and she had seven kids of her own and they lived in Brooklyn and we became very close with her family, with her kids, because some of them were Amy and my age. My parents would go away for, like, a two-week stint to LA to do whichever game show or Love Boat or whatever it was. Hazel was so sweet. She knew she had to be the disciplinarian and keep us in line, but ... it was kind of like a free-for-all a little bit when we were on our own. We'd stay up late sometimes, trying to sneak out.
As we got older and became teenagers, then there were other things going on, like my sister started going to Studio 54 when I think she was, like, 17 and I was 13. And she would take me to Studio 54 with her friends and they would sneak us in. They put me in a yellow and green polka-dotted Fiorucci shirt ... and an Army jacket and these Mickey Mouse sunglasses. And they put this outfit on me and we went up and [the bouncer] Mark saw us and he pointed to us and said, "Come on in." And we were in. And that happened a few times. So I think I was 13.
On calling his dad when he had a bad LSD trip
I took LSD once when my parents were out doing The Love Boat once. … I was the guy who called his parents on LSD. I called them up in LA because I was scared. I was having a bad trip and [it was] the only time I ever did LSD. My mom got really mad at me. And my dad was actually much nicer and kind of tried to help talk me down. And he said, "I understand what you're going through. When I was 11 years old, I smoked a Pall Mall cigarette and I was sick for two days." And I was like, "No dad, you don't understand. I don't understand what reality is." But he was great. He was actually great about it.
On his father being cast as Frank Costanza on Seinfeld
It was life-changing for him. He was a very lovable guy and ... people just loved seeing him let out all this emotion and kind of this tamped up rage that he had inside in a very funny way. And I think the fame that it brought in, because Seinfeld was such a phenomenon, was like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was fulfilling for him, I think, a childhood dream of being someone who could be funny on his own. …
For me, I was kind of just starting to experience success on my own. So I was happy that my dad was working and that he was in this show that was such a phenomenon. There was never competition between us. … My mom was the one who sort of was, I think, having to deal with not having that kind of success at that point. But for her, I don't think it was as important a thing and as relevant to her own personal happiness, though I think she would have liked to have worked more as an actor.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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