Ben Stiller On ‘Zoolander 2’ Being Unfairly Treated By Critics: “It’s Hard To Think It Was That Bad”

Ben Stiller is looking back at Zoolander 2 and still doesn’t understand why it didn’t match the first film’s success.

In an appearance on Hot Ones on December 5, Stiller opened up about the Zoolander sequel after host Sean Evans asked which of his movies “was most misunderstood or treated unfairly by critics.”

“It’s very hard to analyze why critics like something or don’t. I’m always surprised when critics love something and I’m always surprised when they hate something because it’s so subjective,” Stiller said.

He added, “It’s hard to think it was that bad, that people didn’t like it that much. But maybe I’m wrong.”

Earlier this year, Stiller said he felt “blindsided” by the comedy sequel’s box office results.

“I thought everybody wanted this,” Stiller said on David Duchovny’s podcast Fail Better (via People). “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f***ed this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.”

He continued, “It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’ What scared me the most on that one was l’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself … on Zoolander 2, it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”

Stiller directed the action comedy sequel, which he co-wrote alongside Justin Theroux, Nick Stoller, and John Hamburg. It was released in 2016 and opened to $15.9M over a Valentine’s weekend. The film grossed domestically $29M with a $50M budget.

Zoolander 2 competed with Deadpool, which dominated the box office in its premiere weekend with $152.2M. How To Be Single also dropped the same weekend and topped Stiller’s film, generating $19.9M over the same four-day period.

Watch Stiller’s full appearance on Hot Ones in the video below.