Here’s Why Ben Stiller Quit ‘SNL’ After Four Episodes
Despite having famous comedians as parents — Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller were regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show — Ben Stiller didn’t want to follow in their footsteps. “I wanted to be a serious director,” he told The New York Times. “It was more just wanting to individuate from my father, wanting to be my own person, not being into their comedy.”
Young Stiller wasn’t into that Ed Sullivan stuff — he favored Saturday Night Live. But when Stiller found himself an actual cast member on SNL, he discovered he wasn’t cut out for live sketch comedy after all. In fact, he lasted only four episodes before he called it quits. “I knew that I couldn’t do well there because I wasn’t great at live performing,” Stiller said. “My mom would have been better on that show. I got too nervous, I didn’t enjoy it, and I wanted to be making short films.”
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Lucky for Stiller, MTV was giving him that chance with The Ben Stiller Show. (It would later move to Fox.) “It had been my dream to be on Saturday Night Live, but looking back on it, I don’t remember exactly how I had the gumption, but for whatever reason, I followed that instinct” to strike out on his own and direct movie trailer parodies like Cape Munster.
How did Lorne Michaels take the resignation, considering Stiller only stuck around for a month? “He was like, ‘Okay, Ben’s going to do what Ben’s going to do,’” Stiller remembered. “It wasn’t great.”
Stiller also described his SNL discomfort during an interview with Howard Stern in 2018. After Jon Lovitz put in a good word, Michaels hired Stiller on the strength of a short film he’d made parodying the film The Color of Money. His dead-on Tom Cruise imitation couldn’t have hurt.
Years before Andy Samberg and Lonely Island made digital shorts an SNL mainstay, Stiller envisioned an Albert Brooks-esque existence making little films for the show. “That’s really what I wanted to do,” he told Stern.
Instead, writing sketches and performing them live was the assignment. “It was very competitive,” Stiller confessed. “I just felt I couldn’t do well in that situation.”
If nothing else, the experience probably gave Stiller a better appreciation of the 36 live performances his parents did on Ed Sullivan. “My mother was more of a polished stage performer,” said her anxious son. “She knew how to work a crowd.”