‘The New York Times’ Gets Ben Stiller to Confess That He Borrowed His ‘Dodgeball’ Villain From a Disney Movie

In the early 2000s, Ben Stiller made a number of movies in which he played an awkward leading man who may or may not have to meet somebody’s parents. But he was just as good, if not better, at playing over-the-top comedic villains, as evidenced by his work as White Goodman in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.

Disney fans quickly noticed that Goodman, the head of Globo Gym, was distinctly similar to another fitness-obsessed antagonist that Stiller once played: Tony Perkis Jr. from the 1995 Judd Apatow-scripted family comedy Heavyweights. 

You can tell it was made in 1995, because it’s about a grown man literally torturing children to get them to lose weight.

As we’ve mentioned before, this observation has even inspired some fans to theorize that the two characters are one and the same, which would mean that Dodgeball takes place after Perkis has relocated, changed his name and grown out a big goofy Hulk Hogan-like stache.

Stiller has previously addressed the overlap by teasing that Goodman is “definitely a first or second cousin to” Perkis, but now he has revealed the full backstory of what exactly happened, to The New York Times no less. 

During their weekly The Interview podcast, The Times chatted with Stiller about the upcoming season of Severance and his brief tenure on Saturday Night Live. But minutes before the episode wrapped up, interviewer Dave Marchese mentioned the Heavyweights villain, and asked Stiller, “It’s essentially the same character you transposed from one film into the other, right?”

“Shhh Dave,” Stiller jokingly whispered. “No, they’re not, they’re totally different. One has blond hair, and one has really dark hair. One has a mustache.” 

When The Times pointed out that “the voice is the same.” Stiller conceded that “the voice is basically the same, yeah.”

He went on to note that Dodgeball and Heavyweights were “two of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had on movies,” and explained that when it first came time to do a read-through of the Dodgeball script, he was unsure of how exactly to play the role. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, like what voice do I do?’ I don’t have that many different voices,’” Stiller admitted. “And I kind of just went into (the Perkis) voice and (director Rawson Marshall Thurber) is like, ‘That’s great.’” 

Stiller did tell Thurber, “Well, I kind of did that in Heavyweights.’” But the response he got was: “Oh, that’s all right. Whatever.”

Stiller seems to be genuinely surprised at the continued fan interest in the connection between these two characters. “I honestly never thought — not that I was. like, trying to pull one over (on audiences). It’s just, I never thought anybody would, 30 years later, be talking to me on The New York Times about calling out Heavyweights and Dodgeball.”

Hopefully this admission won’t lead Disney to sue over the intellectual property rights of one man’s silly voice.