The other side of Will
The comic everyone knows is reserved, considerate and gentle
FOR all his colourful performances, Will Ferrell is polite and softly spoken in person; the kind of man who wears a smart blazer, tie and pocket handkerchief for our interview on a typically scorching Los Angeles afternoon.
His attire best reflects the man he has become today, turning his gift for comedy and vision for what makes Americans laugh into a massive business empire, its tentacles reaching across the big screen, TV and web.
Responsible for Zoolander’s megalomaniac fashion designer Mugatu, Anchorman’s droll newscaster Ron Burgundy and a celebrated George W Bush impersonation, among his many memorable personas, today he has as many behind-the-scenes producer credits as he does starring roles.
Establishing himself in the mid-1990s as one of the best-loved members of US TV’s long-running sketch show Saturday Night Live, he quickly formed a relationship with the show’s head writer Adam McKay, going on to co-write Talledega Nights, Step Brothers, Anchorman and its later sequel.
Today we meet to talk about his long overdue screen pairing with former SNL mate Amy Poehler in The House. They play a suburban husband and wife who, strapped for cash to pay their daughter’s college tuition, decide to open an underground casino in their neighbour’s home.
“College is getting so expensive. It’s not such a stretch really?” deadpans the actor, professing to uncertainty over the status of the college fund his wife, Swedish actress Viveca Paulin, 48, set up for their own three boys, Magnus, 13, Mattias, 11, and Axel, seven.
“I hope it’s enough by time they’re ready. It’s crazy,” says Ferrell, who majored in sports information at USC – the privately funded University of Southern California derisively known as “The University for Spoiled Children”.
Poehler was a frequent collaborator with Ferrell during their SNL reign.
“Will is not the kind of guy who is constantly looking for attention or validation throughout the day like some other people. He is a natural captain and when you are a leader you don’t always have to tell everybody you are,” says his The House co-star, having previously shared just a few minutes of big screen time in Blades of Glory 10 years earlier.
If first time director Andrew Jay Cohen was nervous about issuing orders to his illustrious cast on The House, then Ferrell
put him at ease.
“Will is very reserved and gentle. He has such an approachability and sweetness; he’s not at all like the characters he plays – but when the camera is rolling, he’s almost possessed.”
A former member of the comedy troupe The Groundlings, it’s to Ferrell’s solid reputation that he was able to pick up the phone to Jeremy Renner and get him on board as a gangster in The House.
“You call a bunch of people and you have a long list and 90% of them say no and then someone says: What about Jeremy Renner? He’ll never do it! And then he decides he’s gonna do it and you’re like: Wow, that’s great!” says a modest Ferrell, who frequently refuses to take credit on his friends’ films, slipping without fanfare into Starksy and Hutch as Big Earl, the legendary crasher Chazz Reinhold behind Wedding Crashers or as a sleazy mattress salesman in The Internship.