Ben Stiller Says Robert Downey Jr.’s Tropic Thunder Role Would Have Been ‘Incredibly Dicey’ If It Were Released Today

Robert Downey Jr.’s Tropic Thunder character is a big reason the film probably couldn’t get made today, according to director, co-writer and star Ben Stiller.

“Obviously, in this environment, edgier comedy is just harder to do,” the Severance director told Colliderin a recently published interview. “But yeah, the idea of Robert playing that character who’s playing an African American character, I mean, incredibly dicey. Even at the time, of course, it was dicey too.”

In the 2008 satirical comedy, Downey Jr. stars as a White Australian method actor who has undergone “pigmentation alteration” surgery to play a Black character. The Iron Man star appears throughout the film in Blackface make-up, a wig and speaking in African American Vernacular English.

“The only reason we attempted it was I felt like the joke was very clear in terms of who that joke was on — actors trying to do anything to win awards,” Stiller told Collider.“But now, in this environment, I don’t even know if I would have ventured to do it, to tell you the truth. I’m being honest.”

For the supporting role, Downey Jr. earned Oscar, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

Over the years, Stiller and Downey Jr. have stood by the controversial film, which also received backlash for its disrespectful treatment of people with mental disabilities around the time of its release. They have frequently stated that Tropic Thunder was satirizing actors who engage in insensitive and offensive stereotypes.

“I get to hold up to nature the insane self-involved hypocrisy of artists and what they think they’re allowed to do on occasion,” Downey Jr. said of role during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast in 2020.

“Tropic Thunder is about how wrong [Blackface] is,” he asserted.

In that same interview, the actor recalled thinking that “I get to be Black for a summer in my mind, so there’s something in it for me” when Stiller approached him to appear in the film.

“I make no apologies for Tropic Thunder,” Stiller wrote in a 2023 X post. “It’s always been a controversial movie since when we opened. Proud of it and the work everyone did on it.”

More recently, on a January 2024 episode of Rob Lowe’s Literally! podcast, Downey Jr. told the host that “the spirit that Stiller directed and cast and shot Tropic Thunder in was, essentially, as a railing against all of these tropes that are not right and had been perpetuated for too long.”

The film made more than $195 million at the box office