Ben Stiller has revealed his thoughts about the legacy of Tropic Thunder, believing the film would have little chance of getting made today.
In an interview with Collider, Stiller was asked about the 2007 film, which he directed and starred alongside Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. as a trio of actors whose war film production in the middle of an Asian jungle goes awry.
Downey Jr. played Kirk Lazarus, an Australian method actor who goes to extremes for his role – namely, undergoing “pigmentation alteration” surgery to closely resemble the African-American staff sergeant he intends to portray.
When asked if the film could be made today, Stiller replied: “I doubt it.”
“Obviously, in this environment, edgier comedy is just harder to do. Definitely not at the scale we made it at, too, in terms of the economics of the business.”
He added that, even at the time, the circumstances that got it made – such as the approval of studio DreamWorks and its founder, Steven Spielberg – he now considers “fortunate”.
“It’s a very inside movie when you think about it. But yeah, the idea of Robert playing that character who’s playing an African American character, I mean, incredibly dicey,” Stiller elaborated.
Ben Stiller at a ‘Tropic Thunder’ press conference in Japan in 2008. CREDIT: Junko Kimura/Getty Images
“Even at the time, of course, it was dicey too. The only reason we attempted it was I felt like the joke was very clear in terms of who that joke was on — actors trying to do anything to win awards. But now, in this environment, I don’t even know if I would have ventured to do it, to tell you the truth. I’m being honest.”
These days, Stiller has turned to the director’s chair, with his Apple TV+ series Severance becoming a surprise hit back in 2022. Its highly-anticipated season two will be released in January 2025, and Stiller offers more on what to expect.
“Knowing how Season one ended, there were so many obviously big questions,” he prefaces to Collider.
“We now have sort of opened up the world for the innies who have been on the outside world, so we felt like there was a responsibility to open up the story in that way and ratchet up the stakes and really dig into these relationships in terms of what Mark is dealing with in this very unique situation of the innie and the outie.”
Adam Scott as Mark, Zach Cherry as Dylan, John Turturro as Irving and Britt Lower as Helly in ‘Severance’ CREDIT: Apple TV
“The first season was so much about Mark trying to navigate this world, and then now realising, having had his innie be on the outside world and learn this incredibly impactful thing about his wife, to follow up on that and that journey, to me it’s always been about Mark’s journey towards figuring out who he is.”
He also reveals that season two was shot “backwards”: “We had a lot of fun doing it, weirdly. It was just a great experience,” he recalled, like shooting at an actual prison – he hints at “escape stuff” that will happen in upcoming episodes.
The first two episodes of Severance will premiere on January 17, with the remaining eight episodes released weekly up until the finale on March 21. The news came alongside a short teaser and in October, a full trailer dropped.
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