Ben Stiller Reveals Tom Cruise’s Two Requests For “Tropic Thunder” | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend

Hi, my name is Ben Stiller, and I feel, hmm, about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Wow. Devastating. I like that. Devastating. Not even a word, a noise. I think the last time I was optimistic or something like that. I'm just pulling it out of my head. It was something kind of positive, and this time, a noise? Well, I was trying to be realistic about the last time where I had all these hopes that, you know, and now here we are. Yeah, yeah, here we are, and it really hasn't blossomed, the friendship. I mean, it's sort of, yeah, it's sort of kind of like treaded water for a while. Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's always there, and there's like a lot of love, and there's a lot of, you know, like appreciation of our history, but we haven't moved forward in time together. No, not for lack of my trying. No, I know, I know. I've contacted you many times through your people. Yeah. And they, I often get just a, we'll get back to you. That's why I have people. Yeah. But what's... I gotta get some people. Can I just say something, what's weird? The people sound suspiciously like Ben. It sounds like Ben picking up, and he says, let me get Ben's people, and then the people sound a lot like you. It's like the guy from the Donald Trump who called into the post. Oh, yeah. Whatever that guy's name was. David Barron or John Barron. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I've known you a very long time, and I was very excited you're coming in today because you're one of my all-time favorite comedy people. Your body of work is ******* crazy stunning. And I was, we're gonna talk about Severance, which was my favorite show. That first season was perfection, and I am delighted that Severance is coming back. So much so that your people said, I can watch a few episodes, and they said, you can watch a couple of episodes of this new season, we'll make them available to you. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm re-watching season one to watch season two, and I don't wanna watch it on a computer. Yes, yes. I don't wanna watch it. I wanna watch it because I think the direction, which is you, is, I know some other people direct, but you direct the majority of these episodes, is absolutely fantastic. The art design, the acting, the whole thing is through the roof. Thanks, man. It's delightful. Thank you. Conan, I really appreciate that. Thank you. No, no, that means a lot, because you know how much I respect you. Seriously. Well, I, I'm. No joke. I'm, well, now people think it's a joke because you said no joke. I know, I said no joke too quickly or something. I don't know. I think seriously was the first place I went with that. And then no joke is trying to save it. Yeah, yeah. Too many qualifiers. We're gonna talk about it because anyone who's listening to this right now, if you're not watching Severance, if you didn't see season one, go and watch it. It is, it's, it's just, I think, flawless. And there's so many images in it, moments in it. And it's got me thinking about so many things. So I'm very psyched for season two. Pretty chilly out there at winter time. Yeah, it is. You know what I like about winter time? I'm gonna tell you anyway. I like sitting around with my pals, my good buddies, my posse, and I like cracking open a cold one, you know, whether it's a holiday gathering, office parties, or a fireside conversation, football Sundays. Oh, I love football Sundays with the gang. Sure do, you're such a jock. I am a jock. The old jockaroo, they used to call me. Winter means more moments with the coolest people in your life. It really does. And making these moments even better with Miller Lite. I'll tell you why I like Miller Lite. I've been thinking about it. It's brewed for taste. Yeah. Okay. It hits different than the other light beers. I think of all, all my good times with my buddies. Miller Lite's there. After a bike ride, chilling, after maybe a quick pickup game of rugby, I like skiing in the Alps, spelunking. When you're like- When I go into, I love sort of exploring caves in and around various exotic locations. And then I like to have a Miller Lite. It feels refreshing. It's also easy to drink. It's 96 calories. Go to millerlite.com slash Conan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer. Tastes like Miller time. Celebrate responsibly. Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. But along those lines, I just wanted to go back to, I'll just touch on it. Met you for the first time. We mentioned this last time, but I think it bears repeating. I met you when you came to SNL and right away was doing one of the funniest things I had seen when you played a grownup Eddie Munster. Right. With the whole outfit, but you're jaded now. Yeah. You had done a Tom Cruise film, which was a parody of Color of Money. And I looked at that film and I remember thinking, well, why isn't this, this is what Standout Live should be. Which later on, if you look at what Please Don't Destroy and a lot of the shorts from Lonely Island, it became more, the shorts, these short films, which are just, you know, became more and more of the DNA of the show, which I remembered you were, when you first came along, I was remembered, the first thing I saw you do was that short that you had made, I think yourself, self-funded or something. Yeah, I made it on my own. Is it before Ben Stiller's show? Yeah, no, this was before anything. I was in a play called The House of Blue Leaves off Broadway and the cast, the play was doing really well and it moved to Broadway and John Mahoney was in it and Stockard Channing and Chris Walken and all this amazing cast. And I made this short takeoff with these two guys, Steve Clayman and Ralph Howard. And we put, I kind of put all my money into it that I was making for the show and we made this short and then we were like, okay, let's take it somewhere. And this was, I mean, it's just a proof of how old I am and we are, is that- Not me. No, not you. I met you when I was four years old. I know, I know, I forgot. I'm 39 years old, but there was nowhere to go. There wasn't anything to upload it to at that point. So it was like a video cassette and Lovitz had come to the show. He'd seen the show and I reached out to him because he came backstage afterwards and he knew my parents and was very nice. And I reached out and I said, hey, I've got this short. Can you, is there any way you could get them to take a look at it? And he literally like met me in the lobby at 30 Rock and took the video cassette upstairs. I remembered watching it. All of us were blown away. Your Tom Cruise impression was fantastic. I couldn't believe that they were putting it on the air because there was nobody from the show in it. Yep. And it was Jim Downey. Yep. Jim Downey, great. Who's been on this podcast, amazing head writer. And he just, when he saw something that was great, he knew this has to just be on. I find it so interesting that people can go back and look at that Color of Money parody that you did and you should look it up and check it out. But to me, it was saying, it occurred to me today, oh, this was the way to go. You were ahead of your time, in my opinion. Like it's- I don't know. I was just sort of like, honestly, I've probably talked to you about this before, that it was for me trying to do what Albert Brooks, who I think was ahead of his time for sure. Very much so, yeah. In terms of like what he did, his first movie, Real Life, which was about reality television and making fun of it. And what he had done on the show and watching that when I was younger and wanting to do that kind of thing. Yeah. So. Well, it's interesting to me that you, when I first saw you, you were doing a spot on Tom Cruise impression. And then you flash forward all these years with Tropic Thunder. Yeah. And Tom Cruise plays this executive in Tropic Thunder. And it is, I mean, I've talked to Tom Cruise about it. It is one of the funniest cameos. He comes out of nowhere. And I know that he came to you when you, I don't know if you approached him about playing this character and said, what's the character's name? Is it Lou? Les Grossman. Yeah. He had like two- Jewish. Yeah. I mean, it's never really stated, but it's kind of implied. Just occurred to me now that's a Jewish name. But he had requests, right? He had two requests, which was, correct me if I'm wrong, or you could say he wanted his hands. Yeah. He wanted to have big, thick forearms that were hairy. And- He wanted to be Jewish. And he wanted to- And he wanted to dance. And so- Again, Jewish. What's crazy to me is that when he said those things to you, you might've been thinking, oh, what? I don't know. Did you right away say- No, I was, I mean, it's a strange set of circumstances the way that this happened. We had done this little short for the MTV Movie Awards where I played his stuntman. And that's where we, and we had met a couple of times over the years before that. But then we had a great time doing that together and had stayed in touch since then. And I had had this idea for the movie for a long time. I'd been working on it with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen came on later and we finally had this script and I had talked to Tom about it. And originally I wanted Tom to play my part. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And, but I was like a little bit, I was like too, really too nervous to ask him to do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he's Tom Cruise. Sure, yeah. He has other stuff to do. Yeah. And we were friendly and hanging out. He was so nice and like just the greatest guy. But I didn't like want to bother him really with this. And, but I, eventually I sent him the script and he was like, this is, this is, this is great. I'd love to be a part of this. And I was like, well, maybe you could play, there's like an agent role. He's like, well, no, I've played an agent before. Yeah, yeah. Jerry Maguire. Yeah. And he said, but it was his idea, this character. He said, you don't have a studio exec in the movie. Yeah. So this was like three months or maybe like two and a half months before we started shooting. And Justin and I were like, well, Tom is, you know, would like to be in the movie. And he had this idea of playing a studio exec. And so we went back and came up with Les Grossman and it changed the whole plot of the movie, but made it so much better.