(Credits: Far Out / NBC)
Mon 8 September 2025 20:45, UK
It may have been a long, long time since Will Ferrell made a film that could be classed as a must watch, but there’s no question that when it comes to comedy movies made between around 2003 and 2013 he was absolutely at the top of the tree.
Even setting aside the peerless Step Brothers, which seems to get funnier with every passing year, Ferrell was either directly responsible or partly responsible for some hilarious films during that decade, including Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The Other Guys with Mark Wahlberg, the list goes on. All superbly quotable, genuinely laugh-out-loud movies.
He was also busy working on shows like Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, which has the finest example of someone falling off the back of a chair ever put on film, as part of his comedy website Funny or Die, plus he worked as a producer on several other hits like HBO’s Eastbound and Down and the online comedy series Drunk History.
Ferrell did what he did better than anyone, always fully committed (which many believe is the secret to doing comedy well) and often taking things to an outrageous level. That, of course, would often involve shouting, as his brilliant uncredited cameo in Ben Stiller’s Starsky and Hutch attests to: “MOM! THE MEATLOAF!”, but according to his former Saturday Night Live co-star Seth Meyers, that wasn’t a welcome influence when it comes to comedy in general.
He explained to podcast host Mike Birbiglia: “Here’s a really good example of a bad instinct: ‘It’s funny when Will Ferrell yells’ — I’ll do scenes where I yell. Maybe one of the only people who’s funny yelling is Will Ferrell. [He is] the great comedy yeller. I actually think I wasn’t the only person negatively influenced by the yelling of Will Ferrell, ’cause there was, I think, a generation of screaming comedy that was worse than when Will did it.”
“It can’t be alpha yelling,” Meyers said. “It has to be that comedy move of a beta who thinks they’re an alpha.”
One comedian who Myers does think can get away with raising his voice for laughs though is I Think You Should Leave creator Tim Robinson, who is well known for screaming in skits on the Netflix show including Coffin Flops (“I didn’t DO this”) and the ‘Karl Havoc’ mall mask sketch (We did WAY too much).
Ferrell, meanwhile, is also going to be joining the Netflix ranks with a new show along the lines of Ted Lasso, involving a former golf legend that sees him pair up again with the team behind his acclaimed documentary Will & Harper. That film showed Ferrell and his good friend Harper Steele as they embark on a road trip to mark the latter coming out as trans.
The project picked up a host of award wins and nominations, and Ferrell also took on a producer role for the film, which saw him enlist a number of former colleagues from SNL to appear, including Meyers, Kristen Wiig and Tina Fey.
Ferrell is also working on a film with Ryan Gosling called Tough Guys, and a movie with Zac Efron titled Judgment Day about a prisoner taking over a courtroom while being broadcast live on TV.
Related Topics