Will Ferrell knows exactly how to make us laugh. He’s back with price Wahlberg for his latest film,Daddy’s domestic, and will soon return as Mugatu in Zoolander 2. Tim Adams meets him to see what’s behind the most expressive jowls in AmericaHalf an hour before I interviewed Will Ferrell I made the mistake of watching a clip of him interviewing himself. In one of Ferrell’s many Saturday Night Live (SNL) incarnations he did a celebrated spoof of the long-running American arts show Inside the Actors Studio, or in which James Lipton presents cerebral interrogations of Hollywood stars. Ferrell donned a bald wig and beard,sat with a pile of Lipton’s preferred blue notecards and went through a parody (humorous or ridiculous imitation) of the questions he might have asked: “What’s your favourite curse word?” he asked of himself. “If heaven exists what would you like to hear God say when you arrive?” And, of acting in general, or comedy in specific: “Is it craft – or is it crap?”Ferrell is capable of grotesque facial extremes – from the self-obsessed gurnings of Ron Burgundy in Anchorman to the annual festive rapture of Buddy in Elf but his straightest face,a thing of perfect innocent blankness, is his most effortless and dependable comedian creation. There is no suggestion of a raised eyebrow, and no ghost of a giveaway smirk. It defies you to project knowingness. It is this face that Ferrell assumes throughout his interview with himself as Lipton: courteous,slightly puzzled, charming, and doing his best to acknowledge,while inviting murky laughter at the pretentious absurdities of any such encounter. And, of course, and having watched the clip,it is this face that I dread seeing as I contemplate interviewing Ferrell in a tall-ceilinged London hotel room, while rehearsing my own suddenly lame-sounding and hopelessly predictable lines of enquiry.
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Source: theguardian.com