Will Ferrell opened up about his initial rejection at the Saturday Night Live. With his new documentary, Will and Harper, streaming on Netflix, the actor looked back to his early days in the industry and claimed that his peers on SNL assumed that Ferrell wasn’t funny.
The Barbie actor revealed about his experiences in the entertainment zone with his longtime friend and the SNL writer, Harper Steele, in the documentary.
Ferrell, in the documentary, took a road trip across the countryside with Steele after she came out to the world as a transwoman.
Ferrell mentioned to Steele on their trip, “I was trying to get to know everyone and there was a group of people who were looking at me and were like, we don’t get what this guy does. He doesn’t seem that funny.”
Soon the writer-producer quipped, revealing, “That first week we went downstairs to lunch and there was just something about the two of us where we were kind of on the same wavelength in a lot of different ways.”
She further added, “They all thought Will Ferrell was a dud. But you know, I just knew that Will was not the dud.”
As the friends travelled around the cities and the outskirts, the Anchorman actor revealed that at various points in his life he would use his fame to break the ice with the strangers. Steele and Ferrell also got into personal and emotional topics as they discussed their lives and Steele’s identity, as she finally lives as truely herself.
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Speaking of facing the difficulties over accepting her true identity, Harper confessed to the Elf actor, “My whole writing career, my whole creative life, I performed as a character named Andrew. That’s the way I think about it, at least. And so coming out to my friends was especially hard and I really can’t tell if they think I’m Harper. I think they might think that I’m still Andrew and now I wear dresses.”
In addition to the two, other SNL colleagues who feature in the Will & Harper documentary are show creator Lorne Michaels, Fred Armisen, Tina Fey, Will Forte, Colin Jost, Tim Meadows, Seth Meyers, Tracy Morgan, Paula Pell, Molly Shannon, Kristen Wiig, and others.
Will & Harper is available to watch on Netflix.
