The actor says the MPA board “thought it was too close to f—er” at the time
Ben Stiller had to jump through hoops to make sure Meet the Fockers avoided an R rating.
During his appearance on Hot Ones Thursday, Dec. 5, the actor said he had to give the Motion Picture Association, which sets ratings for films in the U.S., some unique documentation before they determined that the 2004 comedy sequel could maintain a PG-13 rating.
“Is it true that the Motion Picture Association would not allow for the name Focker unless the filmmakers could prove that there was actually someone with that surname?” Hot Ones host Sean Evans asked, to which Stiller, 59, replied, “Oh, I think that is true, yes.”
“Because it was PG-13, I think. And they thought it was too close to f—er,” he continued.
Evans asked, “So they’re like, ‘If you wanna clear this hurdle, you have to show us a photocopy of someone’s driver’s license with this surname’?”
According to Stiller, whose character is named Gaylord “Greg” Focker in the films, there was an entire legal process that required evidence proving Focker was a real surname. “I don’t understand how it works legally, honestly, but something like that did happen,” he recalled.
Universal/Dreamworks
Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller in ‘Meet The Fockers.’
A sequel to 2000’s Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers followed Stiller’s character’s in-laws (played by Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner) meeting his parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) for the first time. A third film, Little Fockers, came out in 2010.
Stiller also told Evans that he experienced a similar problem during the production of Zoolander, as the MPA was reluctant to give the movie PG-13 because of its raunchier scenes.
“I also remember having to go to speak to the arbitration board when they wanted to give Zoolander an R rating,” Stiller said.
“The goat orgy thing was something that they didn’t care for or they didn’t think it was wholesome enough,” he said. “And this whole thing was so ridiculous. I wrote a little speech, and I had to go through it all. … I had to talk about other movies that had come out that had worse things in them.”
According to the filmmaker, it was “nerve-racking because it was so important.”
“When you have a comedy, when you have jokes that you know work, the last thing you wanna do is cut them for a rating,” he said.
Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty
Ben Stiller in 2023.
Back in 2020, Stiller reflected on the 20th anniversary of Meet the Parents’ release, and recalled how terrified he was to work with De Niro for the first time.
“I remember the first day that we shot together,” Stiller said during a cast reunion on the Today show at the time. “I think it was the scene where we meet for the first time at the doorstep. I said something like, ‘Oh, this is a nice house,’ or something, and I kind of looked up at the house, and Bob saw me look up and he like looked behind him like, ‘What am I looking at?’ “
“And he reacted, and I cracked up in his face, just started laughing,” Stiller continued. “And then started sweating because I’m like, ‘I can’t believe I’m breaking character on the first scene, the first line. He’s going to think I’m the worst.’ But then there was a moment where he smiled and I then felt, ‘Okay, it’s alright.’ But from then on, I never felt any more comfortable actually.”
