When I read about your career around 2010, there was a real change. They started making fewer big comedies and instead made films like “Greenberg,” “While We’re Young” and “The Meyerowitz Stories.” They did The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Brad’s Status. This is about middle-aged men grappling with the big questions. Was this the result of a conscious decision to make a different kind of film? Yes. It was around this time that I moved back to New York. I’ve lived in LA for 20 years and wanted to try spending more time at home and working closer to home. But for me, my attitude really changed after Zoolander 2. It was a feeling of, everyone wants this and I’m going to do it, and I enjoyed it, and then no one wanted it! I thought: But you said you wanted it! And was it really that bad? Then I thought I had to make a choice. I want to do these other things and not be put off when someone offers Zoolander 3. But “Zoolander 2” gave me the gift that no one offered me “Zoolander 3.” (Laughs.) Also, my marriage wasn’t in the best shape. There was a lot going on.

You mentioned that your marriage was bad. You and your wife Christine Taylor separated for a time and then reconciled. I saw her on Drew Barrymore’s talk show and she brought up the idea that breakups and reconciliations are the result of what she called “growth spurts” in adults. What was your growth spurt during this time? When we broke up, it was all about having space to see what our relationship was like, what my life felt like when we weren’t in that relationship, how much I loved our family unit. It had been about three or four years since we were not together, but we were always connected. In my opinion, I never wanted us to be together. I don’t know where Christine was, you’d have to ask her, but Covid brought us all together in the same house.

An act of God. Yes. It took almost a year of us living in the same house before we were actually together. But I’m so grateful for it and I don’t think many people get back together after a breakup. There won’t be anything like that when you come back. You have a lot more appreciation for what you have because we know we couldn’t have it.

I understand you are working on a documentary about your parents, Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller, the comedy team. If people don’t know the team, they probably know that your father played George Costanza’s father on “Seinfeld.” Yes.

What did working on the documentary reveal to you about your understanding of your parents? I realized that this is a kind of reflection on my own problems that I have with them. I’m so lucky that I have all these shots of my parents and our family from these Super 8 films that my dad made and then I took and shots that my dad took. Just hours of conversations with my mom as they wrote sketches or developed ideas. Or sometimes he recorded us just because he wanted our voices. I was thinking about this this morning: how much I love my father, but also the tension of not wanting it Be my father, but everyone loves my father. And as a son, I would like to be loved like my father because he was a lovely person. But then there’s the thing about: But I am Me.