Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst Is the Unlikely A24 Movie It Boy

When director and writer Kyle Mooney and co-writer Evan Winter began mapping out the story that would become Y2K, about an alternative history where, in 2000, the computers actually do come to life and plot to destroy humanity, they knew they needed an icon of the era to go into battle with the group of high school teens who are attempting to bring down the machines.

Only one person came to mind: Limp Bizkit’s frontman Fred Durst. If you grew up in the late ’90s and early ’00s, Durst was known as an early purveyor of nu metal and easily recognizable by his backwards red hat. Songs like “Nookie” and the band’s cover of George Michael’s “Faith” were mainstays on the radio and playlists at high school dances.

While Mooney and Winter knew that Durst would be perfect, they were afraid that the singer and actor wouldn’t be interested in the role, which is pivotal in the last third of the film. “When the movie got greenlit, he was the first person we went out to. It was definitely scary because if he had said no, there was no one we were psyched on. After a couple of Zooms, it felt like we might have convinced him, and truly it feels like some sort of cosmic blessing that he was down to do it,” Mooney tells The Daily Beast’s Obsessed.

While there were initial nerves going into the project, it became instantly clear that Durst was going to bring something special and authentic to the film. Winter says, “Working with Fred exceeded every hope and expectation I had going in. We’re so proud of his performance. He’s subtle and vulnerable one moment, dryly comedic and hilarious the next. He’s a versatile and commanding screen presence, and it all feels effortless.”

Durst was told the same story from Mooney and Winter—that he was the only choice to be in Y2K and was written in the script, but he initially didn’t believe it and was a bit hesitant to sign on to play himself—or the version of himself he was in Limp Bizkit. “After a few Zoom calls and meetings and us agreeing to make sure we take the biggest and best jabs at me and Limp Bizkit that they could do, we would move forward,” Durst says.

Y2K comes at the end of a creatively interesting year for Durst and marks the second A24 film he plays a role in. The other is Jane Schoenbrun’s critically acclaimed I Saw The TV Glow, about two teenagers who bond over a Buffy The Vampire-style show which seemingly alters their reality. TV Glow came out earlier in 2024.

Both films are drenched in nostalgia—an appropriate jumping off point for Durst’s 2024 filmography, 25 years after “Nookie” was released. “I’m just blessed that whatever’s going on and the vibes and frequencies and energy of what’s happening in my particular life experience just keeps footing me in these positions to be around these really incredibly creative and fascinating people,” he says.

“With the nostalgia and the throwback, and I really love comedy too. Limp Bizkit is a satire and it is really going to be wild being a part of something so zany,” Durst continues. “I feel that it’s interesting that the cycle of trends and things that resonate now from a period before, it just keeps happening. To be a part of something that’s come back while I’m still alive, because it seems like it was just yesterday.”

While he got to play an extreme comedic version of himself, I Saw The TV Glow has Durst stretching out his acting muscles to play the small but effective role of Frank, the stoic, widowed father of Owen (Justice Smith), who is haunted by the death of his mother and his increasingly loose grip of reality. “Jane is very talented and it was such a different thing, I Saw the TV Glow. I was like, ‘Well, I got to really do something interesting and different here. I’ve got one line and I’ve got to bring this.’ I understood who the character was and it was such a cool experience watching Jane work, a mega talent there,” he says.

Getting to work with filmmakers like Mooney and Schoenbrun evokes some of the reasons that Durst ended up doing Limp Bizkit in the first place—he wanted to make films. He always envisioned the band as satire with a means to the ends of getting to direct.

“With Limp Bizkit, it was difficult. I don’t think I was smart enough to do it the way I saw it and felt it because, as I was having fun with it, the label was like, ‘We don’t want the comedy in there. We want more live performances. We want this,’” Durst says. “And I’m like, ‘I’m doing this to be a filmmaker. I’m not a singer in a band. I put the band together to direct the music video, to become a filmmaker like David Fincher or Michel Gondry.’ And they’re like, ‘No, your band’s blowing up and you’re going to keep doing this.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, I guess I’ll keep doing it.’”

Durst, who was adopted, was obsessed with video cameras when he was growing up and would shoot his own skateboard videos and little movies as a “gothic skateboard break dancer.” His parents introduced him to films like The 400 Blows and Badlands, and he knew it was something he wanted to do.

For a man who was associated so closely with Male Culture during Limp Bizkit’s heyday, these two films give him the opportunity to not only rethink the reasons why he started the band, but also how what he wanted them to say didn’t necessarily translate during that time period.

“I was bullied and tortured at home by everyone around me and had a very tough upbringing. I was a really sensitive boy and super non-alpha male, just completely, a fish out of water where I grew up. I suffered a lot from that growing up and with Limp Bizkit, it was fun to me to manipulate and trick those people. They’re wearing red caps and doing their thing and I’m up here [on stage] just going, the irony is unbelievable. But nobody took time really to listen to any of the subtext of the lyrics or context of the lyrics,” he explains.

With the driving force of ’90s and ’00s nostalgia putting him back in the spotlight, the 54-year-old Durst now has the opportunity to recontextualize the band and what he initially wanted to do with them.

“I never thought this is going to be some stigma and you’re going to be pigeonholed here forever. I was like, ‘Hey, man, I go home at night. I know who I am and I know what I’m doing, and the small group around me know me’ So if it’s having a moment now where it just seems where we’re winking at the camera a little stronger, I mean, maybe that’s what I have to do,” he says, “I look back and think maybe I could have hit the nail on the head a little more and just spelled it out for dummies. Ultimately, I don’t have any regrets and I have a good moral compass. And with Limp Bizkit, the perception, it’s a piece of art. You take it for what it’s worth, and if you care to dive deeper, then you might figure something else out about it.”

He’s hoping this will allow him to be creative and get more opportunities of which he’s hungry for. And it’ll just be another moment under the belt of a man who has already had wild career moments. Take for example, performing at 1999’s MTV’s New Year’s Eve Special as Y2K panic was everywhere. “We had been hired by MTV to play in Times Square when the ball dropped, and so the Y2K hype was out there, but it just didn’t seem like anybody believed it. I said, ‘Hey, we’ll cover Prince’s ‘1999’ and when the ball drops, if we go out like that, then that’s pretty cool.”