Will Ferrell has recalled some of the toughest notes he’s received from directors, naming Woody Allen as one filmmaker he was left particularly confused by.
While promoting his new Prime Video comedy You’re Cordially Invited – in which he stars with Reese Witherspoon – Ferrell was asked if he remembered some of the most unhelpful director comments he’s been given during his career. One, on the set of Allen’s 2004 comedy Melinda and Melinda, immediately sprung to mind.
“[He] came up and was like, ‘I don’t know how to say this, but you’re coming off nasty’,” Ferrell said. “I was like, ‘Okay’.”
Allen then reminded Ferrell that the movie “was a comedy”.
“I said, ‘I’m not trying to come off nasty’,” Ferrell added. “That was a doozy.”
Melinda and Melinda, a minor hit in 2004, co-starred Radha Mitchell, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Steve Carell and Chloë Sevigny, and revolved around a woman in New York whose life unfolds in two different timelines. Ferrell played a married man who falls for the titular Melinda.
During the conversation with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ferrell also mentioned another filmmaker, who he did not name, who dismissively laughed that a particular line reading of his was “never going in the movie” and quickly reset the scene.
Witherspoon, meanwhile, recalled being asked by a director to “sparkle” – something she said made her want to “punch him in the face”.
Ferrell and Witherspoon play feuding wedding planners in You’re Cordially Invited, which is streaming on Prime Video.
Last year, Ferrell led – alongside his friend and frequent collaborator Harper Steele – the Netflix documentary Will & Harper, in which the pair took a road trip together shortly after Steele came out as trans.
Speaking to The Independent upon release, Ferrell spoke of his bafflement over the rise in transphobia.
“There is hatred out there,” Ferrell said. “It’s very real and it’s very unsafe for trans people in certain situations. But I don’t know why trans people are meant to be threatening to me as a cis male. I don’t know why Harper is threatening to me.”
In her review of the film, The Independent’s film critic Clarisse Loughrey called Will & Harper “frank, refreshing and funny”.
