Before streaming, Christine Taylor had a hard time tracking down episodes from her beloved Nickelodeon series, Hey Dude — until her husband, Ben Stiller, stepped in.
Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller’s Timeline
“I remember it was before the DVDs. There was a period of time where I was trying to get a hold of the episodes because my dad had recorded them on VHS. So that puts it all in perspective. My dad had a catalog, and I was like, ‘Not only is that going to be horrible quality, I don’t want to spend any time to transfer those to CDs.’ We were trying to get them all and Nickelodeon was owned by Paramount, and I’d just done the Brady Bunch movie. So we went to Paramount. We’re like, ‘Do you have a catalog of this show?'” she exclusively told Us Weekly on January 9. “And Ben as a birthday gift for me, got all of the DVDs and put it in, like, a binder. It’s like an embossed logo of a leather binder. … This must have been, like, 2000.”
The couple gathered their kids to watch a few episodes — but they didn’t even get to the credits.
“I was so excited to pop in an episode and show my kids. Ten minutes in, they were literally, like, looking around like, ‘How much longer are you gonna make us watch this?’ Because it’s quiet and slow. It’s not great editing or music every second,” she recalled. “It was not something they decided to go in to see all 65 episodes. I think they got their 10 minutes of episode one!”
Taylor and Stiller, 57, share daughter Ella, 20, and son Quinlin, 17. Years before tying the knot with the Emmy winner in 2000, Taylor dated her former costar David Lascher, with whom she now cohosts the “Hey Dude… The 90s Called!” podcast. The pair played Melody and Ted, respectively, on the series, which ran for five seasons from 1989 to 1991.
“I didn’t think that everybody knew … but the cast said everybody knew,” the Blossom alum, 50, explained to Us in their joint interview.
‘Blossom’ Cast: Where Are They Now?
“And I was a teenage girl and I needed to vent and to share my feelings. So I had all of my go-tos of who I would sob to,” Taylor recalled of her time on set.
As Lascher chimed in: “Oh, so you told everyone! You told everyone!” Taylor teased: “Yes, of course I did!”
Taylor noted that “the timing was not ideal” for the exes, which led to their heartbreak.
“I remembered my tears,” Lascher joked. “Before we recorded our first episode, Christine came to dinner at our house and I thought, ‘Christine, honestly, I thought maybe you’d be very guarded and private about a lot of things.’ And she was just like, ‘This is our show. Let’s talk about everything. Be open and honest.’ And my wife, Jill [London], and I’m sure Ben is like, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ We were teenagers and if people are interested, then great.”
As for whether the split was mutual? Absolutely not.
“David, you said I broke your heart and I felt terrible. And then you would get mad at me and then I would probably say, ‘Let’s try to do this again.’ And then it wouldn’t work,” she said.
“Listen, everyone has that one teenage or young adult relationship that crushes them,” Lascher told Us. “And yeah, Christine had a boyfriend from high school in Allentown, [Pennsylvania]. That was her first love and he happened to be on the greatest college basketball team of all time. … We had a nice run. We had so many good times. I remember the good times, the laughs, the love. And then I remember one summer being crushed.”
“Hey Dude… The 90s Called!” airs Mondays on iHeart. For more details, go here.
