Transcript of Why Ben Stiller Made Severance (and Doesn’t Care about What Elon Says About Him)

The M7 is a little... It picks up noise. It's a much better mic. Okay, how's that? Yeah, that's good. You're very manly. It's great. Okay, good.

Good.

Hi, everyone from New York magazine in 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 When they clock in at 9: 00 AM, their brain is wiped clean of the outside world, and when they clock out at 5: 00 PM, 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 a lot of things that have gone on for a while, and it's about who you are in 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. 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 how the US economy 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 Silicon Valley, so stick around. Support for the show comes from NerdWallet. When it comes to finding the best financial products, have you ever wished that someone would do the heavy lifting for you? Take all that research off your plate. Well, with NerdWallet's 2025 Best of Awards, that wish has finally come true.

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What's up, you all? I'm Kenny Beacham. On this week's episode of Small Ball, we get into maybe the wildest, craziest, most shocking week in NBA history. The trade deadline came, and it did not disappoint. Some trades I love, some I hate it, and some made absolutely no sense at all. The league has been shaken up, and I'm here to break it all down with you. Man, what a time to be an NBA fan. You can watch Small Ball on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcast. Episodes drop every Friday.

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It is on. Ben S. Welcome, and thanks for being on On.

Hi, Cara S.

Hi, Cara 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 INI, and it is you, but your brain wiped of all the details of your out-y life. 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 INI would be like?

Recently, I've been thinking about it actually, but I think the innies are more innocent. They're less corrupted by life experience. And so I guess my I'm thinking he 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 hunched and stressed.

Well, it's interesting because some people's in his or not, on the show, like Helys is quite angry, right? She's an instantly angry, and her Audi is also angry in a different way.

Yeah, I I think Heli is, she's rebellious and curious and not a rule-follower. Yeah, 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?

Right. So you wonder where that comes from, right? Because a lot of them do, 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.

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

Right, and a cynicism that goes with it because they're beginning to see things. Would you ever do get severed? I'm just curious. I was thinking, I was talking about with my wife, Amanda, would you let it happen? 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. I think 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 can you actually cut off, right? Because 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, too, is there's 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. I mean, we all find ways to cope with the everyday torrent of stuff that's coming at us in life.

Right. It's also I go to hardware stores and browse. I do. I love them. To be clear, you're not the writer of Severance, but your executive producer directed quite a lot of the episodes. But 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. What attracted you to it and the writer, Dan Erickson?

Well, honestly, the script came into our production company, and it was a spec script, a script sent to see a writing sample. And Jackie Kona worked at her company at the time, read it, and she gave it to me, and 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 dialog, 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 just a desire to make it. Sometimes it's hard to actually analyze what it is that draws you to something because 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 in terms of just 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 thought I I could see it in my head and wanted to make it happen.

That was it.

What was the thing about it? Because if it reminded... By the way, you are the voice of Keir Egan, right? The cult leader.

I am the voice of Keir Egan in the I guess it's episode eight. The weird video game. Yeah, when you hit 100% and you got the little video of Keir on the mountaintop. So it's not actually... It's an actor playing Keir because we actually have the voice of the real Keir Egan that Mark Geller portrays when you see, and he's who Keir 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 me to a lot of comedies that I loved, the office banter, this feeling of this weird It's like the movie Office Space or Parks and Rec or the Office, that genre of office workplace comedy. Workplace comedy. Yeah, where it's like a lot of the humor is based in everyday stuff. But then there was this other layer to it, which is these people don't know who they are, where they are, what they're doing, why they're doing it.

It's like you put Mary Tyler Moore in an absurd, a Sartre play or something. A little bit of no exit, I guess. Because it's also A lot of friends of mine, they're 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. Is there... There's also- I feel like it's rooted in the workplace comedy genre.

Then it also has these aspects of thriller, but also like '70s style readers, and then also the weird twilight zone vibe to it also. 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, ever before. I had obviously worked for a long time. He and I partnered up, and it's always been his vision. But I think we really collaborated a lot in terms of just 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.

I don't know how old this guy is, but do you remember one of the last Planet of the Apes, like not beyond, when they're Century City, a Planet of the Apes.

It has- Yeah, that might be Battle or Conquest. Battle, Conquest.

I don't know. I do remember that. It had that really cheap feel, but also, you know what I mean, in those weird places.

Well, these are formative movies for me, the Planet of the Apes movies. I went to the Lose 84th Street them and watched 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 just things that I love to watch.

Or Omega Man. It had a little Omega Man.

Omega Man, for sure.

We're all Charles Heston.

Yeah, a little bit of Logan's Run-ish. Logan's Run-ish.

But 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's been a million movies of 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.

Yeah. I think technically, Lumen is a med tech company, and they They go back to the 1860s and '70s when Keurigen founded it. It is really 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 for Mark in the first season when he just talks about, supposedly, I'm a corporate archivist or something like that. He doesn't have any idea what up to. And I think that idea of people who are working for giant corporations with the tech or whatever who actually knows what they're really working towards. I don't know about that world that much, but it seems to me.

Well, it's a maximum of what is work even for, right? What's the idea of what works even for when you're just a cog in a larger picture of it?

Yeah. And I think that goes just back to human nature. It's like we all want to work, we all want to have something to do with our lives. And then there are certain people who have ideas of doing things that are who knows what they wanted to do. I mean, 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 that we think is meaningful. It can be really distressing when you're doing that and something you think is good or meaningful to you. But then the overall goal of this corporation you're working for might be totally nefarious.

Yeah, the goal of the tech billionaires is fascism, as it turned out.

And greed, right? It's all about greed.

Power. Power is where it is. Or they know better, and they will tell us what to do. That's what this Corp, Lumen, is like that, too. We know we care, but then they don't actually care in any way. 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, the happiness he has in one world and deep unhappiness the others 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.

Yeah. I mean, to me, again, it's one of the really interesting aspects of the premise of the show is how much of a person can be cut off from, I guess, 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? And so 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, well, how much of this is coming through my feeling for Dylan and Irving, if they're having a conversation, how much of Dylan's Audi life is coming through for Dylan, even if it's not what the scene is about. Or for Adam Scott playing Mark, he's constantly going back and forth between that. I think That's, to me, what's really interesting about the show, too, is finding those places where something transcends the severance barrier, an emotion or a feeling. There's a time in episode, I think it's I forget which episode, so it's season one where Dylan says, basically, do you think does love transcend the severance barrier?

That's the question, what transcends and when we suppress feelings, how much can you really keep out of what you experience? It goes to the questions of post-traumatic stress disorder, suppressed memories, repress memories, all those things.

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

I mean, as a person, I've been in therapy in my life. I've talked a lot. That question of how much talking about your past or talking about memories and issues There's questions about that, how much that really can help, and alternate therapies that are much more in the body and actually not really just about analyzing. I think that, to me, resonates because I feel like a lot of this stuff is internal, and there's 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.

Yeah. Well, except in this case, they use an advanced piece of technology to create the sever, to create the suppressing of the unconscious or the conscious. But even though it's an advanced technology that's happening here, it seems 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, which was there's people walking together in twos Or it's a theme of two characters playing two different people. Talk a little bit about that, the look and feel of why you had the retro set and also the duality that's happening visually.

Yeah. Well, in terms of the Audi world and the Indie world, too, what I thought that Dan had written in the pilot was a very generic world. And I think he was commenting on that, I think, in a way in terms of working for a big corporation can turn you into. That blandness, that corporate blandness, I felt we should mirror in the outside world. And I didn't want to have any actual reference points like CNN or brand names or things when you saw the news. And that was the idea was like, we don't quite know where or when this is. It's now, but we don't want to have a Any touchstones or... And even in the technology. And look, I grew up in the '70s, and I do feel like ever since cell phones and smartphones were invented, it's really changed our lives, obviously, but also storytelling, because so many things that you'd have to do before that you tell a story, you'd have to go and do research or whatever, and you just get on your phone. It's not very cinematic. No. That's why I like a prison story, too. Inside of a prison, you don't have access to that technology.

Prisoners aren't allowed. In a way, severance has a prison aspect, too.

Yeah, it's got the Stanford prison experiment vibe to it.

Yeah. And I think that world should be as interesting and off and generic in its own way as the any world, the out-y world. And so that's why we gravitated towards that. And so the duality aspect, though, is just inherent in the theme. So that's a natural tendency for us then to look for in the imagery that because it's just telling the story in a way, and it lends itself to that. So I think that's part of just the visual world of the show. And I think when you have a clear theme and you have 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, hopefully. I think the great thing about this idea is that it allows for that.

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 in this environment, largely by the Lumen executives who are not severed, by the way, who know both sides.

Right. We We're 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 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 like that. That's a specific aspect of the reality the show that maybe if we were doing this as a modern day show, everybody would be like, oh, wait, well, there's no way you could do that because they would have microphones everywhere. But I think there's something to the clunky nature of this corporation, too, that is fun. We don't have any... There's one security person in the first season, Grainer. But early on, we had experimented and thought about having security guards on the floor. And anytime we ever brought security guards in, it always felt to me like it turned into a Star Trek episode or something. There was something about it. And we realized, oh, well, the more we don't tell, the more we don't show, the more the audience has a chance to fill it in themselves.

And that's always been for me a little bit of the question as I put the show out into the world. When we were making it from the first season, we made all nine episodes and nobody had seen it. It's like, oh, I hope people will buy this conceit because you have to buy into it. But it's there because I feel like those aren't the questions as much that I'm as interested in as opposed to the greater themes of the show.

Right, absolutely. I mean, it's also a return to work story, which is 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.

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

I don't remember any of that. I don't remember. Blocking is working. Someone's like, Do you remember that? I'm like, I don't.

Do you know that Trump was President before? You knew that?

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?

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

Milchick, that guy.

Milchick, yeah.

Milchick, excuse me. Milchick.

Oh, my God. Well, Milchick is... Yeah. I mean, I'm excited for this season with Milchick, too, just because I feel like he's an enigma and he can be scary, but there's 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. And I think that's something that's interesting to us in the show is how, even if it's this weird world or these maybe possibly scary characters that work at the company, they're also working. And so they have to deal with all of the office politics, too.

The Defiant Jazz scene was my favorite when they were dancing. So awkward. I've been at that party. I've been at that office party where they have a cake in the office. They do pineapple here?

Yeah, the pineapple fruit plate as a way of luring people back. It's like the shitty little perks that you get. In contrast to what these people have experienced, that that's huge for them. I mean, though they are trying it in season 2 on the outies. But it's funny to me that when they have an office party, it's still just There's nobody else there. It's just the lights change, but it's still the same four people who are mingling with each other. That was one of my favorite setups that we had with the idea of, well, 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 like, he's like, obviously the best dancer there. Such a good dancer. An amazing dancer, Tramell Tillman. Adam, the best white guy dancing, I think I've ever seen. Quite good.

He didn't do his biting his lip enough.

The white man overbite? Yeah. That'll To save that Billy Crystal, right? Yeah. To me, the weirdness of that moment is like, well, that's what's in the show. 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 and it's really fun to be able to explore that.

We'll be back in a minute.

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The Republicans have been saying lots of things. Just yesterday, their leader said he wants to own Gaza.

The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too.

We'll own it. On Monday, the Secretary of State said an entire federal agency was insubordinate. Usaid, in particular, they refuse to tell us anything. We won't tell you what the money is going to, where of money's for, who has it. Over the weekend, Vice President Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth, tweeted about the same agency that gives money to the poorest people on Earth. We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead. But what have the Democrats been saying? People are aroused. I haven't seen people so aroused in a very, very long time. That's a weird way to put it, Senator. We're going to ask what exactly is the Democrats strategy to push back on Republicans on Today Explained?

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? But 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 is being produced all across the way. But at the same time, Parod Analytics was noting that you might be generating $200 million for Apple in terms of subscriptions and everything else. At the same time, We'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.

Honestly, 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. And someone called up and said, Yeah, Apple is going to do a streaming service, too. And I remember laughing, going like, what? Okay, everybody's doing streaming services. This is crazy. We went out and pitched the show to different HBO, all these places, and Apple was the only one that bought it, and they weren't even up yet.

What did the others say about it?

Well, no one ever really tells you it's Hollywood.

We'll get to that.

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 then all of a sudden they're up and running and we're a show that's in production for them. Honestly, 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.

Oh, they don't. No, they don't ever tell you the analytics.

No, they show us graphs and charts, but without numbers attached 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. I was so happy about that. 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. Coming back after three years in this culture is, it's like 100 years in terms of just 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 at the first season in terms of just the esthetic of it with the show and Apple.

And it always felt like a good- It looks like Apple headquarters, but go ahead.

Yeah, it does. And that wasn't intentional. I've never been to Apple headquarters. I've seen aerial shots, but really, we designed it. But it always felt like it's... Yeah, this 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 fan base, our core fan base, really was still there for it. And I felt like it could go either way. It could go, it's three years and we waited for this. No, thanks. Or like, 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.

So you don't know. I mean, this pair of analytics is pretty accurate, $200 million for Apple in terms of... You don't know.

Yes. I saw that article, but that's all. Yeah. Yeah.

Does that change your going to Apple saying, I want more money?

No. I know because honestly, I feel like they've been great. I have no complaints. It's like they've gotten behind the show. These things are so complicated. I think I was really happy to see that article because I 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 a thing.

Did you have any problems working for a tech company?

You mean in terms of just my own moral?

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

For me, just the concern that not knowing what Apple TV Plus would be, whether or not they how serious they were about it, whether or not we would be looked at as a real show early on in that way. I think that's also 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. Right, which they have. But you do hear, of course, there is like, well, ultimately, it's a phone company. They're making phones.

Yeah. The creator of Transparent called me once and I said, You're selling toilet paper. That's what you're doing.

Yeah. And look, for a creative person who grew up in my generation, it's weird to see. It's weird to see that Amazon Prime is on there when you're shopping for Amazon stuff and you could 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. 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.

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

Yeah.

I think there's- 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. Great. And that's what's great. I mean, that's the upside of working in this era is that 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. That, I think, is something that gets lost a little bit in all the weird negatives of this world, too, is that you have that creative freedom.

At the same time, there's the Netflix phenomenon, right? 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 2 pop up in Grand Central Station that was hysterical where you put them in a glass box and had them do their work in the glass box, which was great. For three hours, they were there. For three hours. And you were outside. People were shooting pictures of you at the same time. Does everything now go around Netflix in that regard, or is there... Streaming is starting to settle, I guess, but maybe not?

I don't know in terms of how it's all settling out. I know 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. Everybody who makes stuff, you want your stuff to be seen. It's that 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 be just go down the queue very quickly and never even get any attention. That's a real thing, too.

You're scared of the queue?

Yeah, sure. But who wouldn't be feeling like, oh, I don't want to just go down? But it's just 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. I think for our show, that benefits our show because we get a chance for people to chew on it and to think about it and to talk about it and to go online and go back and forth. To want it. Yeah, and to want it. I like that. Maybe that's just a generational thing. Just I'm an old guy who's like, Oh, I remember when shows would come on every week. But it is Succession was like that, right? And you look forward to that. And 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 and all that stuff.

And I feel like that will come back around.

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

Sure. Yeah, but back in the day a little bit, and I haven't done it for a while in movies, and it's hard, too. 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. It's the same version of being on the queue at Netflix. It's just on steroids or something.

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

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 the 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.

Wow. That's presuming you have existential dread.

I mean, existential dread is something that creative people have, I think, all the time. That, I think, could be generational trauma that I have, too. I mean, I grew up around that, too. It's not a very secure business being an actor or a creative person. I mean, I can't remember a time when people were at 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 or things like that. But It's just 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.

What didn't feel so... You had noted it 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.

Yeah, that's just- That's old school. Yeah, that's old school. Yeah, it is. It really is. People don't ever say... I don't in any business because I've only done this, but people tell you when they reject an idea or something, if they always tell you the actual, their honest reason why they're doing it. But I think 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. 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 is they really don't know. Going back to Existential Jed, coming Coming up with the guardrails for use of AI in filmmaking are important points of negotiation. The actor's and writer's strikes. We've talked about this. There was some recent controversy with the Oscar nominated film The Brutalist. They use 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.

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 mean, I feel like almost what's going on with CGI really is, in terms of visual effects, is basically into that world anyway at this point. Yes, that's correct. Using those tools. I mean, there are little There's so many ways that if I feel like, oh, to be honest, I'd say, oh, you're doing ADR, which is when you're doing looping extra lines or something, and an actor is not available. If the actor said, hey, it's okay, you can use my voice and we can get those 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 mundane practical things that I think would be really helpful. I don't know. I love The Brutalist. I 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 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. It's hard because I know how much creative people will really stretch themselves to do what they want to do creatively. It's really hard hard to get the opportunity to make a movie that's not something that everybody in the world is going to want to see, but yet those are the movies that we celebrate with awards and move us. That's what I feel for, are the creative people who are forced to have 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. It's very concerning to me when I see what it could be done.

Well, they take your image a lot. Zooland or all your different parts. I've often seen.

That's always happening, that thing. I think ever since the Internet. But 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.

Hey, this is Peter Kafka. I'm the host of channels, a podcast about technology and media. And maybe you've noticed that a lot of people are investing a lot of money trying to encourage you to bet on sports right now, right from your phone. That is a huge change, and it's happened so fast that most of us haven't spent much time thinking about what it means and if it's a good thing. But But Michael Lewis, that's the guy who wrote Moneyball and the Big Short and Liars Poker, has been thinking a lot about it, and he tells me that he's pretty worried. I mean, there was never a delivery mechanism for cigarettes as efficient as the phone is for delivering the gambling apps. It's like the world has created less and less friction for the behavior when what it needs is more and more. You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis right now on channels, wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so here's the deal. Take a former world number one. That's me, Andy Roddick. Add in the journalist who knows everything about tennis, and a producer who's still figuring out how to spell tennis, you get served with Andy Roddick, a weekly podcast where we break down the game we all love.

We cover the biggest stories, talk to the sport's biggest stars, and highlight the people changing tennis in ways you might not even realize. Whether it's Grand Slam predictions, coaching changes, off-court drama, or the move shaping the future of the sport, we've got it all. This podcast is about having fun, sharing insights, and giving fans a real look at what makes tennis so great. Catch serve with Andy Roddick on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen or watch us on YouTube. Like, subscribe, follow, all that good stuff. Let's get started.

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 know what he said about you. We're not repeating that word because I'm a good girl, okay? I don't say that word anymore. I used to when I was a kid. We don't do it anymore. But he seemed upset that you endorsed Kamal Harris. Then after you wondered an interview whether Tropic Thunder could be made today, and I wish there was, as you know, I'm desperate for Tropic Thunder, too. He wanted you to be more upset about how wokeness is supposedly ruined comedy. Talk a little bit about this moment.

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

You think on the up and up now these days because he makes so much sense about everything he does.

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

Tell me why, because he was retweeting a Daily Mail headline that read, Ben Stiller says, Woke America Killed Edgy or comedy. That's not what you said at all from what I could read.

No. Yeah, that was not at all. It's the opposite of what I was saying. 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. Great. Good for him. But I think after the Nazi salute, the double Nazi salute, I'm not into it. Never was into it. 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 It is, absolutely.

The two of them together is very tough.

What he cares about pop culture and all that stuff is 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. I think that's down that lane, something like that.

I don't think it makes anybody a victim. I mean, what the temperature is in terms of what movies are getting made or not. The reality is, 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.

I think it's just- He wanted you to agree with him, I think.

Yeah, well, I don't.

Yeah, 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 a political, but do you think about that at all?

Yeah, sure. I think about it. I don't know. When October seventh happened and- This is the newsreel. Yeah. I was trying to think of like, well, what should I say? I realized I'm not going to be able to express myself in a tweet or a Blue Sky post. I don't 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 and you know what's going to happen with that. To me, it's more a question of where do I express myself and what do I do? And 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, to me, that's not something that I'm going to really do well with or it's just not going to make happy to do that. But I feel like that's why I wrote a little something about October seventh and just put it out there because I wanted to express myself. I just think it's this social media debate and what it turns into never really goes well.

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 Maddo recently, and we talked a bit about her podcast about Nixon's corrupt first vice President, Speer Agnes, 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? Yeah, I'm trying to get that movie made. We almost got it made a couple of 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, and she's a writer, and she wants to make movies. She said, all I What 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. I think people are really inspired, and you're going to see a lot of amazing art come out of it.

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 this.

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 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. 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. I think you have to do what feels right for you.

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, whatever we're on.

Honestly, though, I still think it's good to have stuff that you can watch that can make you laugh and give you a reprie.

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

Do you want to know? You know what? We shot that in the Trump Tower. You did. I know you did.

Yeah.

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. Oh, wow. I don't think anybody ever heard that.

Oh, wow. Good to know.

It's Yeah, but no, look, I like many people after the election who didn't vote for Trump, you wanted to just hide for a moment and just not have to deal with the reality. And I think now it's 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. And so I think that should all be what you're expressing, and it should all 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.

Right. And Spear Ragnu is quite a character. He's such a fantastic character. That was a great podcast. I like all of Rachel's podcasts a lot. Me too. 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 Mirra, 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? 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 indoors and what influences you today?

Yeah. 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 and they would write together and they would perform and come home and be parents and actors. It was all intermingled. And then, of course, you grow up and I got married and had kids and became an actor, and my kids want to be actors. And I was looking at what is it inside of us that the creative process is and how that connects with the relationships that we have in our life when you do this thing. When you go to an office job, you go to the office, then you want to maybe sever and not think about it. But in a life where you're a creative person, it melds through, and it's always part of who you are.

It affected my parents' marriage. They stayed married for 60 plus years, but there was a lot of stress and tension in there. And 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. I was able to take those tapes and see something that I hadn't seen in their private life together and how they navigated this relationship and their careers together.

Where is that coming off?

It's going to be Apple. Apple? Apple Movies. Yeah. It's going to come out later this year, I think.

Last question, what then influences you today about doing this from them? What did you come away with?

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. Sometimes it took him away from the family in a way, just in his head a little bit. I think I inherited that from him. I think it's made me look at my own relationship with my kids and my wife and have a little more perspective on that and maybe, I don't know, 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. Both my parents, I think, were constantly evolving and questioning themselves and looking inward. I think that's something I got out of it.

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

Great talking to you. All right. Bye, Cara.

On with Kara Swischer is produced by Caster Roussel, Keturah Yokem, Jolie Myers, Megan Bernie, Megan Cunane, and Kaylyn Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Kate Furby. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you already find 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 podcast, search for On with Kara Swischer, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swischer from New York Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.