Ben Stiller just wants to enjoy some tennis, people, without going viral.
In March, the Severance director was sitting in the front row watching Rafael Nadal play Nick Kyrgios at the BNP Paribas Open, in Indian Wells, California, when the guy beside him engaged with the Australian tennis player’s tendency to speak aloud to himself during the match.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Stiller told Trevor Noah on The Daily Show on Monday. “Basically what happened was Nick Kyrgios, he talks to himself a lot during the matches, and he kept on saying, ‘Oh, man, get your first serve in, get your first serve in.’ And there was a gentleman next to me who decided when he started to serve to tell him, ‘Yeah, get your first serve in’.
“So Nick Kyrgios turns and goes, ‘What do you…Why are you talking to me? Do you play tennis? Are you a good tennis player?’ And the guy’s like, ‘No.’ And then he looks at me and goes, ‘Do I tell him how to act?’ And I didn’t even quite hear it, so I thought he might have been talking to me. And then that was it. Then apparently, it went viral.”
Noah noted the whole thing resembled a scene from one of Stiller’s comedy movies, in which his character is often plunged into awkward, escalating situations without having any input on his fate.
“Some people understood what was happening, but most people thought that you had beef with a tennis player,” said Noah. “And the thing is, you’re just sitting there like smiling, like, it literally looked like a scene from one of your movies.”
