Ben Stiller is detailing the resentment he held toward his father, Jerry Stiller, over how he handled his mom Anne Meara’s alcoholism.
“When [my mom] was drinking, my dad never really knew how to handle it,” Stiller, 59, explains in his new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, which details his parents’ love story. “I think he loved her so much and he was so committed to her. Also the act and what they did together was so important, that he had to figure out how to deal with that on his own. But I think I resented him for not acknowledging it to us.”
Ben notes that while he and his sister, Amy Stiller, knew their dad “loved us more than anything,” it was still difficult to witness him avoid their mom’s drinking issues while his kids struggled.
“I think he was just trying to figure out how to navigate that and I got so angry at him for not being there for us but I don’t even think I understood that for awhile,” he says.
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Ben & Meara, which hit Apple TV+ on Friday, October 17, is mostly a celebration of Jerry and Anne’s 61-year marriage and comedic partnership. The film was inspired by Ben and Amy preparing to sell their parents’ homes following their deaths in 2015 and 2020, respectively. The documentary doesn’t shy away from the hard truths, either, delving deep into Jerry and Anne’s relationship ups and downs and how Ben’s childhood affected his own marriage to Christine Taylor, as well as being a dad to daughter Ella, 23, and son Quin, 20.
In addition to interviews with Ben, Amy, Christine, Ella, Quin and more, the project also features old public appearances from Jerry and Anne, love letters between the couple, home videos of the family and even tape recordings of conversations throughout the Stillers’ lives.
In one flashback moment, Jerry and Anne appear on a talk show where Anne confesses, “With Jerry, you know, if you have a second drink, he says, ‘Stop that! Don’t do that, everything you do reflects on me!’”
But despite shrugging it off publicly, Ben and Christine, 54, reveal that Anne would “always own her shortcomings” and didn’t shy away from talking about her alcoholism. “She was very open about all of that,” Ben says in the doc.
“So open,” Christine adds, noting that Anne “really loved to talk about all of the things she didn’t do,” particularly when it came to motherhood. “Like, as a parent and a mother and how she screwed up and, ‘We were working, we missed this.’”
“She would see me as a new mother, during those moments where it was crazy and frenetic, and tell me how great a job I was doing,” Christine further explains. “It was a way to make me feel so good about what I was doing, but [also] her acknowledging what she couldn’t do.”
Ben, for his part, notes that a lot his mom’s struggles came from “being overwhelmed” because she wasn’t “prepared” for parenthood after her own mother died by suicide when Anne was just 11 years old.
“What a traumatic thing it was, to lose her mom at such a young age and then when she had Amy and I, being overwhelmed by that and the pressure of the act,” Ben says. “It was hard.”
Anne eventually got sober after working through the death of her own mother in therapy, Ben revealed during a 2022 episode of Mayim Bialik’s “Breakdown” podcast. “My mom had issues across her life with alcoholism,” he told hold Bialik at the time. “She got sober and really explored that stuff.”
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He added, “She really went into trying to figure that stuff out. She had so much trauma. And the thing that I’m so grateful for, is that I think so many people who live with alcoholism in their families, it’s never dealt with. That’s what I’m grateful for is that she really delved into that.”
Elsewhere in Stiller & Meara, Ben and Amy, 64, expand on the added difficulty of their parents being so intertwined as a working duo and married couple. In one clip, Anne is seen telling a story about a young Amy hearing her and Jerry perform a skit about “hating” each other. While the couple explained that mom and dad were just rehearsing, it left Amy confused weeks later when she heard them arguing in real life.
”Sometimes I think about that, because that’s the joke. … But what’s the reality?” Ben asks his sister, who quips, “I don’t know Ben, that’s why we’re so messed up. … That’s what we’re going to figure out by going through this stuff [in this movie].”
Despite admittedly hearing “raised voices” often in his house growing up — and his parents eventually sleeping in separate adjoining bedrooms during their marriage — Ben clarifies that Jerry and Anne did love each other deeply. “They were very close but they were also very different, too,” he explains.
Ben admits he got “more” of his dad’s personality than his mom’s, including people pleasing tendencies. At one point, the actor tells a story about a conflict he once had with Jerry about prioritizing fans over his own kids.
”I remember one time we were on the street and I was literally talking to [my dad] about how I felt like he didn’t pay enough attention to us and a guy came up and was like, ‘Jerry I love your work!’” Ben recalls to his son, Quin, in the doc. “And he started talking to him!”
The story causes Quin to laugh, pointing out that a similar occurrence happened to him recently. “We were out to dinner at a restaurant a few weeks ago and I was stressed about college stuff and the people there wanted to get, like, a picture with you, and I was so frustrated like, ‘The world just has to stop to get this picture.’ You know what I mean?” Quin asks.
Stiller says that despite taking on some of his dad’s attributes, he grew up with an ingrained desire to make a name for himself outside of his parents’ fame. (In addition to their comedic act with stints on programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, Jerry became a sitcom star on The King of Queens, while Anne was praised for her work in The Other Woman.)
”For me, going off trying to have my own career, so much of it was tied to my parents,” Ben explains to Christine. “They just cast such a big shadow. As actors, as comedians, and as people. … Part of me just wanted to distance myself from them.”
His words cause his wife to burst into laughter, as she claims Ben is majorly “contradicting” himself.
“One of them or both of them were always in something you did!” she exclaims, to which Ben replies, “Yeah. Because I wasn’t stupid – they were funny! And I was using them, completely.”
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost is out in select theaters now and will be available to stream on AppleTV on October 24.
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