Will Ferrell has a knack for playing successful but egomaniacal blowhards—his latest character, Talladega Nights’ NASCAR racer Ricky Bobby makes Anchorman’s Ron Burgandy look positively humble. So after all his success in big screen comedies, we’re starting to wonder: have his Hollywood triumphs gone to the funnyman’s head, too?
“Will and I have known each other for about six years now. I met him through my friend Molly Shannon and we just hit it off right away. I have real genuine affection for Will,” says his Talladega co-star John C. Reilly. “He’s a really down-to-earth guy, very real. As successful as he’s gotten, none of that has gone to his head. He’s just like he was when I met him, when he first started off on Saturday Night Live.”
Hollywood.com didn’t just have to take Reilly’s word for it. When we sat down with Ferrell himself in Chicago, we found that while he can take laughter from zero to 100 in just seconds flat, he puts the brakes on Tinseltown ego.
Hollywood.com: Not only are you really funny in this film, you give the rest of the cast room to be funny as well.
Will Ferrell: Oh, that’s very generous of me. Yeah, I guess so. Well, I’ve always been a fan of the ensemble—Adam MacKay and I wrote the script together and Adam directed it—and we’ve been firm believers in that it’s more fun to have a lot of funny characters than just one. That’s the goal. Sometimes it doesn’t work out that way, and that also takes the pressure off of the main character too. So it’s a very sly plan.
HW: What prompted you guys to take on the world of NASCAR?
WF: This whole thing was actually a byproduct of having a lot of difficulty getting Anchorman made. We knew nothing about NASCAR and every studio passed on Anchorman our first time around, and then it really wasn’t until Old School came out and it was the usual game of “We always loved that script!” But it was just difficult for them to wrap their heads around all of it, that it was a comedy about newsmen. We were just like, “No. Think of them as crazy characters.” In commiserating over that we should just pick a topic that everyone knows about and is really accessible like NASCAR and it was like, “That’s a good idea.” That’s kind of how it started out. Then, of course, we gained a little more insight after going to track and races and that sort of thing. But I think that in a weird kind of backwards way, our ignorance about the sport allowed us to feel free about creating outlandish scenarios and characters that had we known too much might have edited us in a way. So by the time that we started learning about it we had already written a lot of it, and so it enhanced what we already had.
HW: Is this comedy aimed more at fans of NASCAR or people who don’t follow the sport?
WF: Well, what we were hoping to do was obviously make a sports comedy in which the sport that’s involved has to have some awareness that we’re having fun with what they do and that sort of thing. At the same time we made it clear to them that we wanted to make the racing look clear, real and intense and we wanted the footage to be as if it was from a serious racing movie. So we feel like we sort of split the difference. In early screenings of the film with friends and colleagues who were writers and other comedians, most of them having no knowledge of the sport, their reaction was like, “Wow. You really make the sport look really cool.” It wasn’t about making a film of fans in overalls in the stands and that sort of thing, because if you go to these races you see a wide range of a type of fan and actually I don’t know if we ever really met a driver who is like Ricky Bobby. I mean, he is a throwback because the guys that you meet now are real polite and nice and they have so much responsibility that they kind of can’t race the way that Ricky likes to race and that sort of thing. So the ultimate goal was to have a fun movie for people who didn’t know anything about racing and then also to have a little fun and pay homage to the race fans who enjoy the sport.
HW: So Ricky Bobby isn’t based on any one particular racer?
WF: No, no. It was more [about creating] someone who would be fun for me to play. It’s also fun to have, however idiotic or abrasive the character is, some underlying humanity. Ricky is cocky, but there is a part of him that still needs his friends to tell him he’s on the right track.
HW: Are the characters always fully written, or when someone like Sacha Baron Cohen comes in do you let them run wild with improvisation?
WF: A lot of the basic setup was written, and then what we usually like to do is just take a week of rehearsals to work on the scenes and then improvise them, and kind of put that on tape and try to go back and film all the options that we thought of in an improvisational setting. And of course we just kind of let Sacha run with it. We almost have to warn a lot of the cast members. In some way it looks like a wonderful opportunity, though a lot of actors are intimidated by it. “What am I supposed to say now? What if it’s not funny?” We’re like “Don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be funny. If it happens, it happens. We still have our script here.” So it can be a hard thing to let go of, but this cast was really open to doing that.
HW: Is that a little George W. Texas twang we heard sneaking into Ricky Bobby’s accent?
WF: Yeah, I mean, that did come out subconsciously. When I actually saw the film I was like, “God. I sound just like Bush.” It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I do agree that it does come out a bit. I should’ve said that it’s my smart little twist that I put on the whole thing, but it just kind of happened.
HW: Are you contractually obligated to appear in your underwear in every one of your films?
WF: I committed a crime that I can’t talk about when I was in high school and it’s part of this work release program that I have to honor with the state of California. I think that I only have three more films that I have to do that and then I don’t have to do it anymore. So rest assured.
HW: How did you have time to make four movies and a few cameos last year and still father a child?
WF: I’m not the father. We had a surrogate. A really nice guy. I could not fit it into the schedule. My wife was cool with that.
HW: Is your son your favorite audience now?
WF: He’s tough to make laugh. He just stares at me a lot like, “What are you doing? It’s not working. Come on, give me a little more.” He’s very discriminating. It’s very funny, but it’s all the clichés. It just adds another aspect to your life that you never thought would be possible. We actually have another baby on the way. My wife is due in late December.
HW: Your next film is the comedy Blades of Glory with Jon Heder.
WF: Yes. We play the top men’s figure skaters. We’re arch-enemies who get kicked out of the sport for fighting on the medal stand, and you cut to us three years down the road and we’re both just pathetic without the skating and we’re convinced that there’s a loophole that we can compete again if we compete as the first men’s pair team.
HW: How’s your ice skating?
WF: It’s coming along. I’ve had so many starts and stops with it. In August we’re [filming] all of the ice skating finally. I can go forward pretty well, backwards crossovers not so good.
HW: We heard Jon had a little trouble on the ice.
WF: Jon Heder broke his ankle a month before we started filming. There was this big talk about whether we would still do the movie or not, and it was worked out. It was a relatively minor break, so we did all the non-skating stuff [first so] it would slowly heal. And then he had another movie which he’s filming right now. When he’s done with that we’ll start again in August. But he’s doing great. He’s back on skates.
HW: What kind of underwear scene can we expect to see in that one?
WF: I’m not sure if there is one. Oh, I’m in a towel in that film. Which is classier.
