Ben Stiller Was Stunned By “Horrible Reviews’ For ‘Zoolander 2’: “I Must Have Really F***** This Up”

Not every sequel can capture the magic — or the audience numbers — of its predecessor. Just ask Ben Stiller about Zoolander 2.

In an excerpt from David Duchovny‘s upcoming Fail Better podcast shared by People, Stiller shed light on Zoolander‘s snubbed star-studded sequel, claiming that he “thought everybody wanted” the film.

“And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really fucked this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews,'” Stiller told Duchovny, who appeared alongside him in the original Zoolander as J.P. Prewitt.

The 2016 film currently holds a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an even lower Audience Score of 20%. Stiller — who co-wrote, directed and starred in the sequel — said of the poor reception, “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,” he reflected. “And it definitely affected me for a long time.”

Nonetheless, he has since found a silver lining, telling Duchovny that “the wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said ‘Make Zoolander 3 right now,’ or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that.”

Instead, Stiller said, “I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on.”

“Not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop,” he continued. “Even if somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you go do another comedy or do this?’ I probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn’t want to.”

When Duchovny asked Stiller why he didn’t want to do another comedy, he replied, “it was just hurt.”

“Finding yourself in terms of what creatively you want to be and do, I always loved directing. I always loved making movies. I always, in my mind, loved the idea of just directing movies since I was a kid, and not necessarily comedies,” Stiller said. “And so, over the course of like the next like, nine or 10 months, I was able to develop these limited series.”

Stiller’s most recent IMDb credit is High Desert, which he executive produced. However, he also may have another sequel lined up: he’s currently listed on IMDb as a producer on Dodgeball 2, a Dodgeball comedy reportedly in development with his co-star Vince Vaughn.

Catch Zoolander 2 on Pluto TV and Zoolander on Paramount+.