Ben Stiller was blindsided over ‘Zoolander 2’ failure: I ‘really f–ked this up’

These models shouldn’t have walked the runway a second time.

Ben Stiller said that the failure of “Zoolander 2” blindsided him, as he reflected on the film with David Duchovny on Duchovny’s podcast, Fail Better.

“I thought everybody wanted this,” the 58-year-old said. “And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f—ed this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.”

With a budget of $50 million, the 2016 blockbuster movie only had a US box office gross of $29 million, according to Variety.

“It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’ ” Stiller continued. “What scared me the most on that one was l’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself … on Zoolander 2, it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”

Stiller told Esquire that watching the movie flop in real time with the rest of the world was “not a great experience.”

Some critics viewed the sequel to the 2001 comedy a box office success as the film is widely quoted and memed on social media.

Stiller wrote, produced, directed and starred in sequel, alongside Owen Wilson and Penelope Cruz. Stiller also directed and starred in the original film.

Celebrities such as Joe Jonas and Justin Bieber also made cameos in the film.

“Zoolander 2” follows Stiller (Derek) and Wilson (Hansel) as they are both lured back into the modeling world where they find themselves at the center of a sinister conspiracy in Rome.

He went on to say how directing the “Zoolander” movies pushed him to do other projects.

“The wonderful thing that came out of that for me was just having space where, if that had been a hit, and they said ‘Make Zoolander 3 right now,’ or offered some other movie, I would have just probably jumped in and done that,” Stiller said. “But I had this space to kind of sit with myself and have to deal with it and other projects that I had been working on — not comedies, some of them — I have the time to actually just work on and develop.”

“Even if somebody said, ‘Well, why don’t you go do another comedy or do this?’ I probably could have figured out something to do. But I just didn’t want to,” Stiller continued.

Stiller directed the 2018 crime drama “Escape at Dannemora,” and won a DGA Award for Outstanding Directing – Miniseries or TV Film.

He’s also behind several episodes of Season 1 of the Emmy-nominated Apple TV+ show “Severance” and is reportedly set to direct “The Seven Fire,” a movie based on the 2014 documentary of the same name.

Stiller is also working alongside Linda Cardelinni and Edi Patterson on a new drama-comedy movie called “Nutcrackers,” which follows four siblings who find a loving shelter in an unexpected turn of circumstances.