Penélope Cruz has revealed the private grief behind one of her most high-energy comedy roles.
The Oscar-winning actress said in a new Porter interview that her father died suddenly while she was filming Zoolander 2. Cruz said she flew home to Madrid for the funeral, then returned almost immediately to set.
Most people just remember the movie for its ridiculous fashion gags, random celebrity cameos, and Ben Stiller playing Derek Zoolander again.
Cruz also said Stiller had just gone through a similar loss. His mother, actress and comedian Anne Meara, died during the same period, leaving the two actors connected by grief while they were making a film built around laughs.
Cruz Said She Returned to Set Days After Her Father Died
In the Porter interview, Cruz said she was filming Zoolander 2 when her father died suddenly of a heart attack. She recalled shooting on a Friday night, learning that he had died in the early hours and feeling close to fainting from the shock.
She flew back to Madrid for the funeral that Sunday, then returned to work almost immediately. By Monday morning, Cruz said, she had to be on set again and make people laugh while filming a comedy.
Zoolander 2 was a broad, ridiculous sequel, but Cruz was carrying a sudden family loss while performing opposite Stiller, Owen Wilson and the rest of the cast.
Ben Stiller Had Just Lost His Mother, Anne Meara
Cruz said the experience also changed the way she thinks about Stiller. In the same Porter interview, she revealed that Stiller had lost his mother two weeks earlier and that the movie could not stop for either of them.
Meara died in May 2015 at age 85. Reuters reported at the time that her family confirmed her death through a representative, without giving details about the circumstances.
Stiller later explored his parents’ marriage, comedy partnership and family legacy in the documentary Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost. Reuters reported that the film looks back at the careers and relationship of Meara and Jerry Stiller, who were married for 61 years.
The Reveal Came as Cruz Promotes The Invite
Cruz opened up about the memory while discussing her new A24 film The Invite, directed by Olivia Wilde.
Porter described the film as a remake of Cesc Gay’s Spanish movie The People Upstairs, with Cruz playing Pína, a therapist and sexologist. The cast also includes Wilde, Seth Rogen and Edward Norton as two neighboring couples whose dinner-party dynamics turn provocative and uncomfortable.
The Guardian described the movie as a dinner-party comedy built around clashing couples, sexual embarrassment and escalating awkwardness.
She Also Brought Women’s Health Into the Film
Cruz told Porter that one of Pína’s scenes about perimenopause was not originally in the script. She said she wanted to bring that subject into the character because a therapist and sexologist should understand female hormones and how they affect the brain.
She also said she improvised a visual joke involving olives during the scene, catching Rogen off guard.
Cruz is also talking about the private realities that actors carry into their work, whether that means grief, health, aging, motherhood or the parts of women’s lives often left out of scripts.
Zoolander 2 Was Supposed to Be Her Wild Comedy Break
Cruz joined Zoolander 2 as Valentina Valencia, an Interpol fashion agent pulled into Derek Zoolander and Hansel’s investigation after celebrities begin dying under strange fashion-world circumstances.
Paramount’s official description of the movie says Cruz’s character learns that the key to the plot may involve Derek and Hansel, forcing the former models back into the world of high fashion.
The film was shot in Rome in 2015 and released in 2016.
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