Ben Stiller & Christine Taylor | Splits

I thought I told you to turn off your phone. Turn off my phone? Yeah. Earth to Matilda. This phone is as much a part of me as... You know what? Can we just cut it out with all the Earth twos, please? We're not actually saying this is the Earth calling you, Matilda. Yeah, no, I got that. I understand you don't literally mean... No, I don't think you do. Listen, it's not like we think that we're actually in a control tower or trying to reach outer space aliens or something, okay? Hello. Katie, it feels like every celebrity breakup these days follows the same kind of script. You get a joint statement, maybe some conscious uncoupling, months of cryptic Instagram posts, and then eventually someone starts dating Pete Davidson. But every once in a while, Hollywood throws us a curveball because after separating for years and publicly announcing their marriage was over, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor somehow did the impossible. If more people did it, we wouldn't have a podcast like this. They found their way back to each other. No cheating scandals, no explosive court battles, no public mudslinging, just two people who realized after spending years apart that they actually did belong together. Ben and Christine quietly rebuilt their marriage while almost nobody was paying attention at all. So how did one of Hollywood's friendliest divorces become one of its happiest reunions? I'm Derek Kaufman. I'm Katie Hayes. And this is Splits. Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor. It's very fitting that we did that in perfect unison because this couple, they split apart and then they came back together. We haven't done an episode like this. No, because this is almost... There aren't many of those. Listen, this is almost not a Splits. We're just skidding by. We're just skidding in there with Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller because they are such a happy couple now. They're the best. And you know, Ben Stiller is one of the biggest Knicks fans on the planet. The Knicks just won the championship. And on those floor seats, recording all the action is Ben Stiller. And right next to him, Christine Taylor. You can have your Chalamets and your Johnny Come Lately Kylie Jenners. Those two are the real deal. They're the celebrity Knicks couple of my heart. Yes, and that's what got us thinking about doing them for this episode is we saw them at every single Knicks game. And it was very cute to me because you would think, like, you know, I always knew he was such a huge fan, but she's equally as big and they do it. They go to every game together. They have that whole... She shares his passion. Yeah, didn't they burn their clothes? Together, it was very cute, but that's what got us thinking. She really is beautiful. That's what got us thinking, though, about the time that they split up. So let's go back to the beginning and start when they met. So they're both two huge comedy stars. Ben Stiller, obviously. He's comedy royalty. Comedy royalty, right. Jerry Stiller and Amira are like legends and he has filled their shoes very well. Exactly. So by the late 1990s, he was one of the biggest stars in comedy. He had already had reality bites. There's something about Mary. Meet the Parents, Zoolander. He had some directing credits. And Christine Taylor... Mystery Men, you remember that one? I don't remember that one. They were like superheroes, but, like, it was Hank Azaria and they were not as impressive as, like, Marvel superheroes. It was great. It's a hidden gem. But Christine Taylor also had an impressive resume. Not talked about as much, but, oh, my God, the Brady Bunch movie. She's phenomenal. You don't miss Maureen McCormack at all. When you see her as Marsha Brady, she's sensational. So, so funny. She had TV appearances. She's, you know, Hey Dude, Ellen, Friends. Tons of TV appearances. Hey Dude was a monster show on Nickelodeon. I loved it. Monster. And so she was a big star in her own right. And they meet in 1999 while filming the Fox pilot Heat Vision and Jack. So we've gone through all these incredible things on their resumes. I've never heard of Heat Vision and Jack. I don't think it ever made air. There's a reason for that. Never made air. I've directed an incredible new action series called Heat Vision and Jack. In it, we follow the adventures of a super intelligent renegade astronaut and his talking motorcycle. Some of you will marvel at our state-of-the-art special computerized effects, which quite frankly rival those of a certain new Star Wars movie. Some of you will be frightened or aroused. Still others may be entertained. As a person you admire, I'm giving you permission to appreciate this show. I'm also offering you my personal guarantee that it's going to knock you back onto your coal mining asses. But that's how they were introduced. So Christine said there was an immediate connection. Ben later admitted that he knew almost instantly he wanted to spend his life with her and they start this epic whirlwind romance. So fast that they dated for less than a year. They got quickly engaged. They married May 13th 2000 in Hawaii. She's still in her 20s at this point and they're just they're very young people. They're in Hawaii. It's a low-key ceremony apparently even though they're both quite big stars. By 2000 Ben Stiller already has a bunch of big titles under his belt and he's just a rising star in comedy, right? But now they're together and they go on to create some of the best, the greatest comedy movies of the early 2000s and they're doing it and they're working together and they're having a great time and they're getting along great and they do Zoolander which she's in. She's incredible. She's the glue of Zoolander. She is. You know, he and Owen Wilson are out there. They're just incredible characters and she's the love interest. So the love triangle goes through her and she's awesome in it. And she is really great. Dodgeball. Fantastic. Tropic Thunder, which I have to say for some reason skipped. It missed my radar. I was not on my radar. You watching it recently is problematic in and of itself. Two weeks ago and I don't think you can admit it in 2026, but I loved that movie. I understand the problems with it, but looking at it. It's all problems. It is. But it was so good. It was God. It's such a nice flashback to a time when it was like comedy could kind of just be comedy when Robert Downey Jr. Could wear black face when Ben Stiller could make fun of the mentally disabled. I mean, it is. It is sensational. It's a classic and it knows what it's doing. It's winking the whole time. It's not mean-spirited at all. Right. And then they had Arrested Development, Zoolander 2. It was they would do these movies and you could just see even in the movie their chemistry was hot, hot, hot. He was becoming like the next generation of his parents really like Jerry Stiller and Amira did this for years. He was on Seinfeld and a host of things and they they were a tandem. They were really a comedy duo and Christine and Ben were sort of recapitulating that in their generation and she was great. I mean, she's she's really, really funny. He's I don't have to give you his resume. He's known as extremely funny, but she is underrated. She is a great comedic timing. Completely agree. So they get married in 2000. They welcome their first daughter, Ella, their first child in 2002. So that's fast, right? So they're married in 2000. Less than a year of dating and engagement and then we've got married right away and basically kid right away because then their son Quinlan followed in 2005. So within five years of marriage, they've already got a family of four. Yes, it's quick. And she takes a step back. She knew she wanted to kind of stay home, raise the kids. We don't see her as much in the spotlight. We don't see her as much in his movies. And it doesn't seem like jealousy or resentment. You don't see it at least in the open. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes. Right. He steps back to become more of a parent. Right. While he is his career continues. And he continues to skyrocket. So then he becomes one of the busiest filmmakers. He has Night at the Museum, Madagascar, Meet the Fockers, which is his family movie era where he's banking, right? He did a lot of edgy comedies, Zoolander, Tropic Thunder, Dodgeball. Those are like R-rated comedies. Then he's doing Night at the Museum, which you can take your kids to. He is just there's still quality movies, but he's just raking in cash and he's directing still. He's doing the Tropic Thunders and Severance is obviously much later, but he's a very, very talented, very smart guy. And this is where things start to fall apart a little bit. Yeah. And we don't exactly, you know, now that they've come back together, we've heard both sides of things. But the biggest thing going on here when this is starting to unravel, we never hear about it. There was no splashy tabloid report. There was no dramatic incident. There was no rumors of an affair. There was no scandal. There was nothing. And friends have described it as just years of slowly drifting apart while they were trying to juggle parenting in their career. And then all of a sudden in May 2017, after 17 years of marriage, they just announced they were separating, which felt so out of the blue for all of us. It was incredibly shocking because they seem like a couple that they weren't flashy and in your face all the time. They would attend games and things like that. And they were a New York sort of celebrity couple. But you didn't think they were going to break apart. I met Ben when I was 28 years old and I really feel like kids always have growth spurts and you have different chapters and stages in your life. And I feel that's also true for adults. And I think even particularly women who you get married, then you become a mom for those who become mothers and what that looks like. And then career or putting career on hold, like all these different chapters for me. And I think at that moment in time for us, we were just not on the same page with a lot of things and working so hard to try to make it fit and make it right. And I think really when we kind of just zoomed out on it, it was like, let's just put a pause here. Let's just... Take a beat. You know, I can talk about it now because we're... But in the moment, I mean, it was very difficult to come to that decision. It was not light. It was not without, you know, a heavy heart and feeling really even dejected at the time of like, this is not how I imagined it was going to be and we should have been able to work it out. I mean, it was challenging. It was sort of like they just existed in the background of Hollywood and people weren't even thinking that this seems volatile. This seems troubling. It's as opposite of a Sean Penn and Madonna-like relationship as you can get, where like, how is this lasting? You're waiting for the other shoe to drop. They just seem like a healthy family with two kids. Totally. And so it was very, very sudden. Like Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman and people like that, who you just like, I thought they would just be buried together. Exactly, exactly. And so there was no drama around this at all and they just released the statement and people were very sad. And then actually, Ben Stiller went on to say, because he just made that documentary about his parents, who, you know, his parents were comedy legends. They were together. They were married for over 50 years. And so that's kind of how we saw... And still seemed to enjoy each other's company. Whenever you saw them together or on these documentaries, they loved each other. And so you kind of felt the same way that the next generation of that, it was going to be Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor. And so Ben even said in this documentary, he said, when we separated, my feeling was, oh, I'm failing at this. Look at my parents. They have this incredible 50 plus year marriage and I can't live up to that. Yes. And this was, by the way, so 2017 is TMZ era. I worked here, you worked here. We ingested this as it happened. And I remember the statement was the usual kind of thing, emphasizing tremendous love and respect. There were no rumors, no affairs, no big scandals, but we're always thinking something obviously is going wrong because a 17 year marriage, when it splits up, it splits up for a reason. That's what you're thinking, not just a slow decay, that there's something here. And I remember trying to find news. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No big scandals. No dirt. And they were really respectful and they said they wanted to continue and they did continue co-parenting closely. They would still spend holidays together. Nobody ran to file the papers? No. They would still spend all of their, you know, went to all their children's events together. And yeah, we should say that nobody filed. So they were just separated. No divorce docs. Yeah, but they announced it publicly because obviously they were going to start conducting their lives separately and people were going to notice that they weren't at events. And so they had to say something. They said something, but there was no big race to the courthouse, check the box, irreconcilable differences, all that stuff. So it was odd in that way. And we thought, well, maybe it isn't that messy if they're not actually trying to order their affairs and talk about spousal support and all that stuff. Maybe it is not over over. So what happened in the aftermath? So this is May 2017. And then there's just a period of like, they're separated. They're doing their own thing. You see, you know, Ben brings his daughter or his kids to red carpet premieres. Christine's not around as much. You don't really see them together. But you don't see them dating either. Right. We never saw him with another person. We never saw her with another person. So again, this is the most respectful separation I have ever witnessed. It was amazing. Yes, because after like Jelly Roll and Bunny XO, you see her kissing someone in his bar. There's always like you start dating. Yeah. And then there's another example of two people who were trying to be very respectful. They got their divorce done quickly. But then there's always just a little like, you know, she does her podcast and then she's kissing a 20 something year old in his bar. And it's like there's always there's always there's always just a little bit of some drama. These two, zero drama. We never saw it. And obviously we cover this stuff. And so we would have noticed they're very high profile people. You never saw it. They spent holidays together. They continue to operate largely as a family. Like they never stopped functioning as a four person unit with their two kids. And they weren't a married couple. There was it didn't seem romantic. You didn't see him on red carpet. You didn't see him holding hands and things. But they still seem to be operating in Hollywood and publicly as just a family, a family. And I thought that was very, very cool, actually. Very. And then COVID happened. So they said that we got the statement in 2017. 2020 COVID happens. And this is the pandemic changed everything for them. Ben Stiller moved back in the family home. Yeah, they became we were all on lockdown. Yeah. And he said, I'm going to move home. They became this family unit and have now said that it was COVID that got them back together because it said they had extra time. They talk carefully about this because COVID obviously wrecked a lot of lives. Right. And the silver lining for them and their family is they got to live in their mansion and reconnect. Exactly. So I get it. But but it is true. It's also just like objectively what happened. We'll think about what happened during COVID. Right. So a big a big part of their life was going off shooting here, being on set, directing this all of your time and energy is kind of given to your career. So your home life starts to slip a little bit. But now there there are no movie premieres. There are no movie sets that are open. There's no directing. There's no acting. So they're really just home, like getting to know each other again, which is a beautiful thing for them. And it worked. You're exactly it took away. You know, she had already pared back, right? She was already in parenting mode. But Ben was so ambitious and he was doing every single project, family movies, really, just like capitalizing on his his, you know, the apex of his career. Really, he was in his prime and he was just could do no wrong, making money at the box office, directing and really just trying to soak it all in. But it forced him. It took that away. Right. COVID put him in the house and he just started to be dad again. They would do family dinners, walks, parenting. And I think that's how he really sort of fell in love with her again or reconnected. If it was if it was possible, it was going to happen then because you can either start to hate that person who you're under the same roof with or start to love them again. I had a good experience with it, too. They had. Well, you did a lot of walks. Every time I called you, I was out of the house as much time in your home. Anytime I spoke to you during COVID, you were moving. I got a very good walking shape. You were outside. Power walk in your neighborhood, 23 hours a day. So let's not get crazy. But one thing they said that they absolutely credit their reunion with is zoom therapy. Yes, I've done some of it. Have you have you? I've never done it. Yes, I used to close my office door and really get after. Wait, I can't say that. Derek is the only person I know that has done marriage therapy, marriage counseling from the office. So he would just close his door. By the way, these are not. These offices are all glass. It's all fishbowls. So you would see him talking seriously in his office. You might see me working through things with welled up tears. Yes, fighting with his wife, who's probably telling him he's too cheap. So he's got to go to this therapy session, but he doesn't schedule it after work. Oh, no, he schedules it during the day where we can all watch where I would go get my lunch and I would do a little therapy. It was actually quite a special time and definitely not something I could have been doing in the office. But anyway, she credits, as she said, it saved them. It also made me laugh because she said that they would do the zoom therapy. So they would the two of them would be seated together and the therapist would be in front of them on their computer. But the therapist would insist instead of the two of them staring at her on the computer, they would just have to make eye contact with each other, which is a little bit of it was just yeah, you can't if you're listening, you can't see it. But Derek and I are very awkwardly staring at each other. I require five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact from Katie daily. And it just makes us feel very connected before our splits up. It's it's it's so it's wild. So that's what they say. They say it really helped. You were still shooting season one of Severance. And were you to what I remember is you were going through a separation around the time of the pandemic. When the pandemic happened, it put us in the same house, you know, but we weren't a couple. We did therapy regularly throughout that period of time on Zoom. I remember because the therapist to her technique is we face each other. You don't sit and just face the screen. We would have our chairs facing each other. Oh, my God. It's very intimate. It's just my heart is blown. I, you know, and she would even if we would look to her for help, she would say, don't look at me. Look, look, look at Ben. Say that to Ben. Wow. So we dug deep, but I, you know, I mean some therapy is going to go one or two. I agree it either if there's something there to save therapy can find it, but it can also like pick at scabs and really ruin things as well. It can it can drive you further apart or it can bring you together. If there's hope it worked for them. It worked for me as well. You know, sometimes I'd be pulled to do some posts every once in a while. Guys, I got to take a five and I got to go write a post. Your wife and the therapist would just sit there while you went to write up a story. Oh my the conversations they must have had about you during during that time. Anyway, so Christine Taylor went on and she did it. She you know, they talk about this openly now. She's happy to talk about it because she was like for us this worked. We got back together. But also I understand if people take the time and it doesn't work out. Everybody's just got to do their own thing. They're really smart and reflective people, you know, they reflect on this relationship. They said when we were separated. I think this is her said it was just having space to see what our relationship was what my life felt like when we weren't in that relationship how much I loved our family unit. Sorry, that's Stiller said that. Yes, Ben said that and he was like it was three or four years that we weren't together, but we were always connected. I think the fact that they stayed a parenting unit and a family a functional family helped during this COVID period just bring the whole thing together and bring Ben and Christine back together. And she also said now that they work on their relationship. She said she was in Montreal shooting last summer and Ben drove up five hours to see her. She said he loves a road trip, but he drove up to see me and she said yeah, we make the time now. We absolutely make the time. I was in Montreal shooting last summer and he then drove up like five hour drive like because he loves a road trip and he drove up and visited me and yeah, we we make the time now. We absolutely make the time and I think when our kids were younger and in the grind and sort of riding the the waves of work and life and activities and travel you can just end up kind of riding that wave without stopping and saying wait, okay, let's make time for us. And so we really do make that time now. So they learned something from this. They grew from this. They're back in love. You saw it at the Knicks game and I just this is this is my favorite split story because it's not a split. It's a happy ending. We don't do happy endings. We really don't and we can talk about the aftermath is the reconciliation. They are both soaring high. He continues to direct. I did escape at Dan Amora. Obviously, we got to talk about severance, which is a massive show. He's he's so funny. Ben Stiller is thought of from dodgeball Zoolander something about Mary. He's a legend of comedy, but he's really smart. So he does this really heady Apple show that is it has it has its humorous moments as well with Adam Scott and so forth, but it gets rave reviews because it's just like a really it's a sort of a jewel box very well put together. So he's building that reputation. She's sort of tiptoeing back in. She was in a show called Search Party, which I loved. I have not seen that yet, but I've heard you've never seen search. Oh, and everyone tells me I have to see it. Oh, you would love Search Party based off of how the Tropic Thunder came out at 25 years ago 30. So in another 30 years, I will get around to visit search party. She's still very plugged in with the family. You know, they're just a different kind of Hollywood love story because it does it did have a split but it ended back with a happy reunion. I love it. It's a happy splits. It's very very cool. That'll do it for us. We will see you next time.