Frazer Harrison/Getty; Emma McIntyre/WireImage
Key points
Ben Stiller discusses working with Benson Boone in an Instacart ad that aired during Super Bowl LX: "This guy is really, really insane."
Stiller says Boone is "incredible" and remains in awe of his acrobatic skills: "I still don't understand how he does it."
The Meet the Parents star said that his costar ate "cheeseburgers and a milkshake" before performing his signature flip.
Ben Stilleris in awe ofBenson Boone.
TheMeet the Parentsactor stars alongside the "Beautiful Things" singer in one of the wildest ads that aired during the 2026Super Bowl: a retro commercial inspired by '80s variety shows that sees the two entertainers play brothers who sing a synth-pop anthem about Instacart's Preference Picker feature with nebulous European accents.
The ad, which was directed byHerfilmmakerSpike Jonze, wasprecededbytwo teasersthat established the tense relationship between Gary (Stiller) and John (Boone), and was also expanded toa longer director's cutthat fleshes out the characters' backstory.
The final 30-second commercial sees John pull off an impressive standing backflip, which should look familiar to anyone who's ever seen Boone's real-life concerts that consistently incorporate the singer's acrobatics. Gary subsequently attempts to one-up his brother by trying — and spectacularly failing — to flip off of the highest point on the set.
In a conversation withEntertainment Weekly, Stiller reflects on working with Boone, pulling off that wild stunt, and crafting his goofy character — and reveals what Boone ate for lunch just before flipping all over the stage.
Instacart/YouTube
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you end up in this Instacart ad?
BEN STILLER:That's a good question. They sent this concept over that I thought was really funny and could be really ridiculous, and so out-there and absurd but very specific in terms of tone and style. It's as if you were tuning into a show or commercial from another time. So that's what excited me about it and of course, how it developed with the creative team. Another huge thing was being able to do something with Benson and Spike, for sure.
How did you settle on the voice that you ended up using in your performance here?
Well, I don't think I ever settled on the voice. [Laughs] We're not quite sure where these guys are from, and sometimes when you're working on an accent, you're trying to make it very specific, but I think our goal was to make it incredibly nonspecific and inconsistent.
Was there any prior performance or project of yours that you were either trying to evoke or trying to avoid repeating? Or was it just its own thing?
I don't think I've ever done any sort of a variety show-type vibe before. I don't think of it that way. Really just from what was described — the references we had were some retro European variety shows and music performances from the '80s, mainly. So it was just going for that, just trying to see what evolved. With a lot of these things, you just sorta start playing around with it and you just see what happens. And then when we connected together, Benson and I, we started just kind of playing off of each other and it sort of evolved, and the relationships developed, too, in terms of who these two guys were.
What was it like working with Benson Boone?
That guy is incredible. I loved him. First of all, he's so talented. He's got such a great, open attitude towards trying something new. I don't think he's done a lot of acting, and he just jumped into the improv and he just has this incredible ability to put himself out there in his musical talent, his physical abilities, and his willingness to kind of go and have fun.
To me, it was just such a blast to work with him. And as I said, we started to improvise together and I'd never met him before, so it was really fun to see that he had that skill and was really into just kind of going for it.
And he just does these insane flips. I don't even understand how he does it. We were shooting after lunch and he's about to do the flip. I'm like, "What did you have for lunch?" He's like, "I had a couple of cheeseburgers and a milkshake." And then he goes and does these crazy flips. Yeah, I love him.
Instacart/YouTube
Do you remember how many times he had to do the flip for this particular ad?
He probably did it… I'd say at least 20 times. And he told me he does 10 to 12 flips a show or something like that, and I was standing right next to him watching him do it, and I still don't understand how he does it. It's crazy. It's crazy.
But the thing about him is that's kind of how he first came to everybody's attention, but he is actually really such a well-rounded performer. His voice is really amazing. We had to record the song, and he recorded his track first, and when he did his, he was going on those crazy vocal runs, I was like, "Oh my God, this guy is really, really insane." So it was fun. It was just fun to be around that and see how he does it. I was talking to him about a show — he doesn't have any backup dancers or anything like that. It's just him doing his thing. He's just pure talent.
Do you know what his impression of you was when you first met? He was born afterZoolandercame out, so I'm curious if he was a fan of yours or if he shared any thoughts on your work.
Yeah, when we met, he said that he had kind of grown up seeing some of my stuff. It's great. I think when you get to this point in life of people are telling you they've grown up watching yourself, I appreciate that. It stopped being surreal, age-wise, a few years ago.
But what I was most excited about is that this guy's really an actor, and it was cool to see that, oh, he could do this if he wanted to do it. And he also seems like he discovered he was a singer when he was, I don't know, 18 or 19. He didn't even start out singing when he was a kid. He was more of an athlete, then he discovered he could sing. So I feel like on this spot, he discovered he can improvise and do comedy, too.
Instacart/YouTube
How did you achieve the insane stunt at the end?
We hired Tom Cruise. [Laughs] I mean, to me, my favorite part of the whole thing was just how incredibly painful both emotionally and physically it was for John and Gary. The relationship is obviously very broken and it comes out in the performance. But we wanted to emphasize the pain of the fall, and that was really Spike, who I knew would be able to dial that in a way to just make it feel at once very real, but also really, really funny. And we had an incredible stunt team.
For yourself, what's the most difficult stunt or physical act that you've ever pulled off personally without a double?
I don't have any specific memories of doing something crazy. I appreciate when you can do your own stunt, but I also feel like if there's something that I think somebody can do better than I can, I will always allow them to do that. Oh, you know what? I think my most fun stunt thing ever actually was being Tom Cruise's stunt double in the thing we did for the MTV Movie Awards. That was probably the most fun.
Instacart/YouTube
Have you ever had a moment like your character in this ad where you get so professionally jealous that you do something incredibly stupid?
It's funny because I think with performers, there's always this sort of internal kind of thing that's going on — internal competition that sometimes ends up pushing people to go for something that might be out of their comfort zone. And so I don't know if I've ever had an experience like that, but I think for my guy Gary, he clearly is so envious of his much younger brother's flip skills, and I think it goes much deeper because I think it really all comes about performing for the love of your parents who withheld that love.
And so I think the greater psychological underpinnings of that relationship — the human level of that in such an absurd commercial — is, to me, what makes it funny because it kind of does connect with real stuff that everybody can identify with. And I think that's what's fun about it, it's having this kind of crazy, dark psychodrama going on between these two guys in this ridiculously silly ad.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Read the original article onEntertainment Weekly
