Ben Stiller is behind one of the biggest shows on TV right now. The famed comedian and actor is the director of the hit Apple TV+ show “Severance,” which is premiering its second season on the platform this month. The dystopian workplace drama, starring Adam Scott (“Parks and Recreation”) has been lauded as one of the best shows of the decade, if not of all time.
In a recent interview with the New York Times, Stiller, the son of Jewish comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who, long before “Nobody Wants This,” played a hot rabbi who falls in love with a non-Jewish women in the movie “Keeping the Faith,” opened up about what it feels like to be a Jewish person working in Hollywood after October 7.
“I think just being a Jewish person feels different,” he told interviewer David Marchese. “I grew up in an incredibly sheltered Upper West Side environment. I never experienced antisemitism. So to start feeling that now, where other people have felt it their whole lives, and to see the rise in antisemitic violence, is something that I never thought I’d experience in my lifetime. The reality of it is frightening.”
“In terms of the business, there’s always been those misconceptions of how Jews are involved in Hollywood,” he continued. “A lot of that is a result of the fact that there were a lot of successful Jewish people who started the Hollywood movie industry, so it sort of folded in on itself. But the reality of that world now is so different. The Jewish population is so small. It took me a long time to even realize, in my sheltered world… the proportion of success, it’s a tough thing to navigate. I feel like right now there’s so much hate and antipathy out there, and it’s not limited to antisemitism. That’s something Jewish people are feeling but people are feeling it all over, too.”
Back in June of 2024, Stiller wrote an op-ed for Time magazine, calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas War and for the release of the hostages. He also decried confounding Jews and Israelis with the actions of the Israeli government.
“Antisemitism must be condemned whenever it happens and wherever it exists. As should Islamophobia and bigotry of all kinds,” he wrote. “There is a frightening amnesia for history in the air. We must remind ourselves that we can only manifest a more hopeful, just, and peaceful future by learning from the past.”
In the New York Times interview, Stiller also talked about how he had long wanted to do an adaptation of the Budd Schulberg novel turned Broadway show “What Makes Sammy Run?” about the conniving Sammy Glick, a young Jewish boy from New York who goes from being a copyboy to a successful screenwriter, “hitting and running his way to the top.”
“For a long time I was frustrated because I felt like this story should be made, but the flip side of it is it can be looked at as you’re shining a spotlight on a Jewish character who is the self-hating Jew who is willing to do whatever,” Stiller explained, saying that he would still love to see that story made. “What I worry about is how people would interpret it on the outside — and that’s as a Jewish person.”
