Ben Stiller has shared his views on the nepo-baby discourse, explaining that he sees why people who’ve grown up with parents in showbiz might follow in their footsteps.
The former Severance director was discussing his own status after he paid tribute to his parents, the comedians and actors Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, in the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, released on Apple TV on Friday (October 24).
It comes at the same time as fellow actor Stellan Skarsgård hit out at the nepo-baby label himself, explaining that his teenage son Kolbjörn is affected by the label.
On SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show, Stiller said that he understands the arguments “about access” but sees it as a “selling point” that nepo-babies have grown up familiar with the industry.
“I think it’s kinda like that Brat Pack thing, right? New York Magazine, they coined a phrase, and then it just became a thing,” he said of the nepo-baby label, which was popularised by the magazine in 2022.
“But it’s always been what it is, in humanity and life,” he said. “It’s like, you buy a violin, a Stradivarius or whatever, it’s been in the family for hundreds of years. That’s a selling point.”
He added: “But I also understand there are other arguments to be made about access and all those things. My feeling is … if it’s in your blood, if it’s your passion and you grew up around it — for me, I think growing up around it, talking about all these things that I saw with my parents, you, actually as a kid, see the dark underside of it, the stress, the effects it has on relationships. You see that up close as a kid, and then you still wanna go into it.”
He did admit that he got his first job, in the 1986 off-Broadway revival of House Of Blue Leaves after he got an audition “as a favour” for Meara, after he “couldn’t get in ‘cause the casting director didn’t wanna see me.
“But I felt like, doing that audition, I knew that I had done what I needed to get the part,” he added. “If you have the passion, you need to do it. You need to go for it.”
Stiller himself has two children with his wife, actress Christine Taylor. They have a daughter, Ella, and a son, Quinn. Both have followed their parents into the world of acting, with Ella starring in the off-Broadway play Dilaria earlier this year and them both having small roles in Happy Gilmore 2 alongside their father.
Also in the Stiller & Meara documentary, Quinn told his dad that he felt he sometimes put being a father last, explaining: “You have all these hats that you’re trying to balance, you know, being a director, an actor, you know, a producer, a writer, but also, just like a father, right? And sometimes I felt that that would come, you know, last to these other things.”
During a Q&A at the New York Film Festival premiere of the film earlier this month, Stiller said of the moment: “As a filmmaker, I’m like, ‘Oh this is a good moment for the movie,’ you know. As a person I’m like, ‘That sucks.’ ”
Also earlier this month, meanwhile, Stiller described making comedy as being “more challenging” in the current political climate. He told Radio Times, “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.”
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