Ben Stiller stopped by The Tonight Show to promote his new documentary, Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, and took the opportunity to rave about working with Ariana Grande on Focker In-Law.
“It’s crazy how talented she is,” Stiller told host Jimmy Fallon. “She’s so sweet. I didn’t know her before. Actually, I had met her before because she did a cameo in Zoolander 2 10 years ago. She was in an orgy scene we had. But I haven’t seen her since the orgy. She’s so great with comedy. She’s amazing in Wicked and she’s such a good singer, obviously, too.”
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He recalled how sometimes he would hear her randomly singing on set and it would be this “incredible, operatic kind of soliloquy.” “And that’s just her humming,” he noted.
Stiller complimented Grande’s talent for comedy. “She’s just a total natural,” he said. “I feel like she could do anything.”
Grande recently revealed on social media that she had completed filming for her role in the upcoming Meet the Parents sequel. The fourth installment in the comedy series was announced in late May, with Grande reportedly cast as Olivia Jones, the fiancée of Ben Stiller and Teri Polo’s son and “a ball-busting woman who seems all wrong for him.”
“I can’t really talk too much, I guess, at this point about the movie,” Stiller previously told The Today Show about the sequel. “But the character [Grande’s] playing is — she’s going to be really, really funny and kind of the whole engine of the new movie. So it’s exciting.”
Universal Pictures scheduled the sequel for November 25, 2026, with John Hamburg — who penned the first three movies, 2000’s Meet the Parents, 2004’s Meet the Fockers, and 2010’s Little Fockers — on board as writer and now director for the fourth installment. Owen Wilson, Blythe Danner, and Teri Polo are all confirmed to return for Focker In-Law, with Skyler Gisondo joining the cast as Stiller’s son and Grande’s husband-to-be.
Elsewhere on The Tonight Show, Stiller discussed Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost, about his parents Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, and the most recent season of his show Severance. Fallon noted that after a successful second season, fans now just want Season 3. “Yes they do,” Stiller said. “And it’s coming.” He confirmed that more episodes of Severance will arrive “soon-ish.”
“It’s tough because people do love the show,” Stiller said. “People love the show and then they’re always like, ‘When is the next season? When is the next season?’ And it’s always, ‘We’re working on it.’ But we’ve only done 19 episodes over five and a half years on the show. I think Young Sheldon‘s done 600 episodes in that time.”
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