![]() ![]() Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount/Nvp/Red Hour/Village R'Show/Kobal/Shutterstock Will Ferrell as Mugatu, who, as Ben Stiller reveals, was originally meant to be portrayed by Andy Dick. “ Blue Steel was such a self-serious name.” “There was a movie called Blue Steel that had come out around that time ,” says the film’s co-writer John Hamburg. The inspiration for the most well-known look came from elsewhere in Tinseltown, it turns out. His Magnum debut, at one point, even prevents the assassination of the Prime Minister. Derek, “a really, really ridiculously good-looking” model is famous for poses-“Blue Steel,” “Le Tigre” and “Magnum”-which, as Mugatu points out in a moment of fury, are all identical. Says Taylor: “Being able to have a scene with my father in law where he's looking at my chest, ‘With a push-up bra, you could have a nice rack of lamb going on there,’ we were just laughing non-stop.” In fact, she adds, almost all of her and Stiller’s immediate family and friends are in the movie “in some capacity.”Īs those who've seen it know, absurdity is a defining feature of the film. “We ended up obviously going with the coal miner thing.” So Zoolander became a family affair, and the set became a place of constant crack-ups. “One of Derek's brothers was a Springsteen impersonator,” Stiller recalls. Stiller was already serving as writer, director, producer and lead actor, but, as he reveals, at one point he was also going to also play both Maury Ballstein (who in the film was actually portrayed by Stiller’s real father, Jerry) and Derek’s twin’s brother. “In that sense, I wasn't scared to look weird,” she explains. And ultimately, Jovovich says she wanted to work against her model résumé. “I was very into her always looking like she just smelled something,” she says. Jovovich used her mother's Russian accent as inspirational fodder, and added a few extra flairs to her role's personality. Referencing the studio supporting the movie, he continued his reasoning: “‘Paramount loves you, and you did The Brady Bunch Movie for Paramount, and they would love for you to do it.’”įor Stiller, casting Jovovich, a successful model who was in both the fashion and film worlds, as Katinka helped “legitimize” his movie. “I remember getting a call from Ben one day saying, ‘So, what do you think about playing Matilda?’” she says. (The two actors wed in 2000.) But after a few people were offered the part-Sarah Jessica Parker and Kate Hudson, included-and it didn’t work out, her name went to the top of the list. After not getting the role of Pam in Stiller’s Meet the Parents the year prior, she wanted to avoid any awkwardness at home. Taylor was actually intentionally sitting out of auditions for the project. “Now it's impossible for me to picture anybody but Will doing it,” says Stiller. He adds another revelation: “Andy Dick was supposed to play Mugatu,” but the comedian wasn’t available because he was working on a sitcom. “The only one that I remember clearly was a young Jake Gyllenhaal doing this wide-eyed version of Hansel that was really funny,” recalls Stiller. Wilson was always Stiller's first choice for who he wanted to play Hansel, but when it looked like he wouldn't be available to shoot, they were forced to hold auditions. It’s nearly impossible to picture any of these roles in the hands of other actors, now, but many had other names attached at one point. Just as stacked was the roster of cameos: David Bowie, Billy Zane, James Marsden, Jon Voight, Vince Vaughn, Alexander Skarsgård, and more all managed to appear. Alongside Stiller, Ferrell, and Taylor, rounding out the main cast were Owen Wilson as the “so hot right now” hipster model Hansel and Milla Jovovich as Mugatu’s snide henchperson, Katinka. By the time it moved from bit to full-length feature, a plot had developed whereby his character would be enlisted by an evil fashion designer named Mugatu (played by Will Ferrell) to star in a campaign that is actually a secret ploy to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia. It was for the 1996 VH1 Fashion Awards that Stiller first invented the dim-witted male model persona of Derek Zoolander. ’Zoolander’ is an American comedy classic now, but at the time of its release, the film was deemed a flop. ![]()
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