Ben Stiller on bringing back Zoolander, everyone’s favourite fashion-world dimwit
Fifteen years is a long time between runway walk-offs, but the film’s star and director believes the time is right for the return of the innocent, stupid, “really, really ridiculously good-looking” male model
At the Valentino catwalk show in Paris last March, the jaded fashion crowd finally had something to wake them up: in a completely unanticipated move, Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson strutted down the runway, putting on their most affected male model pouts, glowering self-referentially at the delighted audience.
Videos released of the impromptu showing went viral – and were probably the most imaginative way for the stars to announce that they were finally readying for the sequel to Zoolander.
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“It was one of those things that was more successful than we thought it would be,” says Stiller at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. He is dressed in shades of dark blue and black – and says that’s about as adventurous as his fashion sense gets.
“It was a big surprise that we’d been working on for a long time to set up,” he says of the Paris catwalk turn. “We wanted to figure out a good way to announce that the movie was happening, in a real environment, and not knowing how people would react was really exciting and stressful.”
A sequel, even in an industry when a project can take years to work its way through the various channels, was long overdue. The first Zoolander came out in 2001. Between then and now, Stiller tried once in 2005, and then in 2010, to make another. Finally, in 2013, it was green-lit.