Judd Apatow Interviews Will Ferrell: April 2020

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

This April 2020 conversation between Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell traces Ferrell's path from a USC sports-information student to one of the defining comedic performers of his generation.

Ferrell attended USC in the mid-1980s, roughly overlapping with Apatow's time there. He studied sports information with the goal of becoming a sportscaster, but abandoned that plan when he realized the career required starting in small markets like Yuma, Arizona, and working his way up through the system. Instead, he decided to try comedy, despite having no prior experience beyond entertaining his fraternity brothers.

In the spring semester of his senior year, Ferrell saw a Groundlings show on Melrose in Hollywood. Noticing in the lobby that the theater had a school you could audition for, he decided to try it. From his first class to getting on Saturday Night Live was three years.

Ferrell credits a conversation with his father, a lifelong musician who played with the Righteous Brothers on and off for twenty years, for removing the pressure. His father told him he had the skill but that success required a lot of luck, and that if he didn't make it, he could try something else. This made comedy feel like a game, like playing the lottery, and Ferrell threw as many darts at the dartboard as he could.

His first SNL episode included a flubbed line in the cold open and the