Ben Stiller’s adult children are accusing him of being an absentee father in his new documentary.
According to Us Weekly, in Stiller & Mehra: Nothing Lost, released Friday, the actor opens up to son Quinlin, 20, about a candid conversation he had with daughter Ella, 23, about their parenting mistakes.
Ella told the “Zoolander” star, “I literally have no recollection of you being around when I was a kid.”
The comedian asked Quinlin if Ella’s comments “resonated” with her son, who explained that parenting seemed to be “last” on Stiller’s list of priorities until now.
“After a hard day or when something goes wrong, you can get lost in your head. Once you’re in it, it’s hard to get out of it,” Quinlin explained. “That might take some of the fun out of the vacation.
“You have a lot of hats and you’re trying to find a balance, right?” he continued. “He’s a director, he’s an actor, he’s a producer, he’s a writer. But he’s also just a father.”
Quinlin concluded, “Sometimes I felt like[the role]was going to be the end of everything else.”
Elsewhere in the documentary, which focuses on Stiller’s parents’ 61-year marriage, the “Night at the Museum: Secrets of the Tomb” star recalls the time he told Quinlin he wouldn’t be home for several months while filming the movie.
At that moment, the little child looked down and replied, “I wish you were home.”
Stiller said she thought she was “a lot better” at raising children than her father, fellow actor Jerry Stiller, but then realized that wasn’t the case.
“I thought I was done,” Ben said in the documentary. “I would fly home on the weekends and look for a special place for the kids to play when they were visiting the set. But really, just hearing their stories, to them it was the same thing I was experiencing as a kid, and I had no idea.”
He told Quinlin: “When you grow up, you always think you don’t want to make the same mistakes your parents made. Then you make other mistakes, or you make some of the same mistakes.”
Meanwhile, Quinlin got serious about the “frustration” he feels with Stiller’s fame, citing an incident “a few weeks ago” when a fan asked him for a photo during a dinner when he was “stressed out about college.”
“It’s like, ‘The world has to stop to take this picture,'” Quinlin fumed.
In a recent conversation with the Sunday Times about this fragile project, Stiller confessed: “I’ve probably failed my kids more than my parents ever did with us.”
The filmmaker and his wife Christine Taylor became parents when Ella arrived in 2002 and Quinlyn three years later.
The two married in 2000 but briefly separated in 2017, but reunited during the coronavirus quarantine period.
Earlier this year, Stiller said on “The View” that after reconciling, he no longer takes his partner’s love “for granted.”
“I know it could be gone,” the “Meet the Fockers” star explained his thinking in January.
“Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost” begins streaming on Apple TV starting October 24th.
