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NEED TO KNOW
- Ben Stiller praised his costar Ariana Grande while speaking about their upcoming Meet the Parents sequel Focker-in-Law
- “What she’s doing in this movie is kind of very unique, she’s a very unique character and we’re having a great time,” Stiller said of the production
- Grande joined Focker-in-Law‘s cast in May; the movie is scheduled to be released in theaters on Nov. 25, 2026
Ben Stiller is teasing Meet the Parents fans further about what they can expect from Ariana Grande‘s performance in the forthcoming sequel Focker-in-Law.
“I mean, what’s surprising and maybe not really surprising is just how amazingly she’s blended in,” Stiller, 59, said of Grande, 32, when he and his wife Christine Taylor spoke with E! News on the red carpet ahead of the 2025 Emmy Awards on Sunday, Sept. 14.
PEOPLE confirmed that Grande had joined the Meet the Parents franchise in a still-undisclosed role back in May, some six months after reports first emerged that Stiller and Robert De Niro were working on making a sequel to 2010’s Little Fockers.
“She’s such a pro, she’s so funny, she’s so talented, obviously as a singer, but also she was so funny and amazing in Wicked,” Stiller said of Grande. “What she’s doing in this movie is kind of very unique, she’s a very unique character and we’re having a great time. I just like to go to work with her and Mr. De Niro and Owen Wilson the other day, he decided to drop by, so that was fun.
Stiller and De Niro, 82, star as Greg Focker and Jack Byrnes in the Meet the Parents movies. The 2000 film that kicked off the series sees Greg and Jack meet for the first time when Greg’s soon-to-be-wife Pam (Teri Polo) brings him home and Greg’s plans to get Pam’s parents’ blessing for their engagement go awry. Blythe Danner, who portrays De Niro’s onscreen wife Dina in the films, will reprise her role in the new movie, as will Polo, 56.
Chelsea Guglielmino/FilmMagic; Phillip V. Caruso/Universal Studios and Dreamworks LLC/Delivered by Online USA/getty
The Meet the Parents sequels have expanded the series’ cast to include actors like Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman, who were introduced as Greg Focker’s parents in 2004’s sequel, Meet the Fockers. Streisand, 83, said during an interview with Variety in June that the producers behind Focker-in-Law would “have to pay me a lot of money” to return for the fourth film.
“I didn’t get paid what the other people got paid and so I’m pissed off,” she said of Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, the third film in the franchise.
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When asked whether Streisand could return for Focker-in-Law by E! News, Stiller’s wife Taylor, 54, said, “That’s a very popular question!”
“We all would love it, we all would love it,” Stiller responded. “We’re in process, we’re in process.”
The next Meet the Parents movie will be written by John Hamburg, who wrote the screenplays for Meet the Parents as well as Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers. The movie is currently scheduled to release in theaters Nov. 25, 2026.
