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Will Ferrell Opens Up On Childhood And His Relationship With His Father

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 06:06 PST, Jan 8, 2016

Will Ferrell certainly knows how to make fans laugh out loud. He has everything a great comedian should have – timing, delivery, and a style that is all his. However, in an interview with the Guardian, Ferrell talked about the influence of Steve Martin, particularly when it comes to his new movie, Daddy’s Home, which opened in theaters on Christmas Day. Of his character, Brad, in Daddy’s Home, Will Ferrell says he is sickeningly emotionally available.

“He is so emotionally available on an almost sickening level, reading the script made me laugh every time. You know that line in the movie where someone says: ‘No one likes smooth jazz…’ He is hands-up: ‘I do!’ He loves benign and mediocre; he loves his Ford Flex. It might drive someone else nuts, but he just loves where he is.”

Will Ferrell also talks about how people’s idea of family really comes from their own family experience growing up and how his father, who travelled a lot as a musician, became very much like Brad.

“It’s true, he was on the road a lot when I was little. He had some of that. But then a sort of seismic shift happened and he really became Brad-like. Me and my brother spent a whole summer with him – my mum took a trip to Japan for a month – when I was 9 or 10 and it turned out to be a huge opportunity for all of us. After that he had a changed attitude. He wanted to know when all the PTA meetings were and so on. He didn’t take any more jobs on the road. I think he saw the meaning in what it might be to be relied on and he maybe felt love for the first time in a way that had not been tangible to him.”

And now Will Ferrell has a family of his own, and by all accounts, he’s a hands-on Dad to his two sons.

Check out the Daddy’s Home trailer below.

Will Ferrell revealed that he has always understood the stable job mentality of people, and he likes it. He is grateful for his own success because it has given him that stability.

“Thank God with the success I’ve had I’ve been able to have stability, too. When I’m at home with the family now it is a blissfully boring existence.”

Will Ferrell has no shortage of material, and when it comes to Daddy’s Home opening just shortly after Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened, he certainly knew how to handle it. The Sun reports that Ferrell can handle taking on Star Wars.

“Star Wars is scared sh*tless.”

Then on a more serious note, Will Ferrell said it is great counter-programming.

“It seemed like this could be great counter-programming… it seemed like a big opening for a nice family comedy around the holidays.”

Will Ferrell has also been recast as Mugatu in Zoolander 2, which is a spoof of the modeling industry. Contact Music reports that the movie has come under some fire lately for the role of All, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. All is an androgynous model, and transgender activists have become angered by the role.

“[It’s a] cartoonish mockery of androgyny/trans/non-binary individuals.”

Will Ferrell defended Cumberbatch’s role and the movie when speaking with BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat.

“We are making fun of a bunch of different things. In terms of reading the script, [there’s] that feeling, that world [in which] the movie is established, is so heightened and over the top… I guess there’s some controversy. To me, I don’t feel like it was over egregious…”

Check out the Zoolander 2 trailer. The movie is due out in February.

[Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images]

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