Will Ferrell’s Funniest Unscripted Moments

Will Ferrell is one of the funniest actors to emerge in the 21st century. He got his start on “Saturday Night Live,” where he became famous for everything from impersonating George W. Bush to playing an always-irritated Alex Trebek on “Celebrity Jeopardy.” From there, he transitioned into an A-list comedic leading man, with Ferrell’s best movies allowing him to play childish, immature characters who manage to grow up, even if it’s only slightly.

Ferrell’s a skilled screenwriter, too, with credits on “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” “Step Brothers,” and “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.” But sometimes the best material isn’t even in the script and comes when two actors are simply in the moment. You never know when inspiration is going to strike, and Ferrell’s a talented improviser who rolls with whatever comes his way or will just try something out to see if it sticks. That’s probably why Ferrell has made so many of his co-stars break character on set. 

Now, an actor laughing during a funny bit needs to get cut, but there are also some unscripted jokes that have made it into the finished film. In case you need further proof that Will Ferrell’s a comedy genius, these are his funniest unscripted moments from both film and television. 

“Saturday Night Live” creator Lorne Michaels has a strict “no improv” rule on the show. Perhaps that’s why many reports of actors going off-script remain just rumors. According to some sources, Will Ferrell took some liberties with the 1998 sketch, “Space, The Infinite Frontier: Dr. Kent Wahler.” Ferrell’s Harry Caray interviews astrophysicist Kent Wahler (Jeff Goldblum) and things quickly go off the rails.

Claims of Ferrell improvising might be due to how baffled Goldblum seems throughout the sketch, as Ferrell asks him questions like whether he’d eat the moon if it was made out of BBQ spare ribs. All Goldblum can seem to do is laugh and say “I’m confused.” But maybe Goldblum is just that great of an actor to where he only appears to be caught off-guard by Ferrell’s ridiculous performance. 

People break all the time on “Saturday Night Live,” but rarely has there been anything on the level of “Short Shorts for the USA.” The set-up’s simple: Will Ferrell’s character enters an office meeting wearing star-spangled banner short shorts and a “USA”-emblazoned crop top. According to rumors and some rehearsal photos, the shorts were supposed to be a little longer; however, on the day of taping, Ferrell walked out with far shorter garments than anyone else seemed to be anticipating. 

The idea no one expected those types of short shorts seems to be supported by the fact no one else in the sketch can keep it together. The pièce de résistance is when the thong rips at the end, proving how Ferrell’s willing to risk it all for a joke. 

Will Ferrell can do R-rated humor with the best of them, but one of his most beloved films is a family-friendly classic called “Elf.” Ferrell plays Buddy, a human raised by elves who goes to New York to find his father, and the film’s filled with Ferrell’s signature manchild-ness. One of Buddy’s most memorable moments in “Elf” comes when he’s testing jack-in-the-boxes, and he reacts horrifically when one pops out. 

Reportedly, director Jon Favreau used a remote to control when the jack-in-the-box would open. As such, Ferrell had no idea when one was about to scare him, meaning his reactions were genuine. Even if he knew the toy would jump out at the end of the song, it’s still a pretty scary toy all the same. 

Elsewhere in “Elf,” Will Ferrell’s Buddy is initially ecstatic that Santa Claus (whom he knows personally) will delight kids at a toy store. He’s despondent when it’s revealed to be a fake Santa (Artie Lange), and he doesn’t know enough about the real world to just let it go. He spews a series of insults at the fake Santa like “You sit on a throne of lies” and “You smell like beef and cheese.” 

Those lines were improvised by Ferrell over several takes, and we’d love to see a set of bloopers of Ferrell trying out all kinds of other kid-friendly insults that didn’t make the cut. While Ferrell had time to play around with the insults, the ensuing fight had to be done in one take because they naturally destroyed the store. That’s when you want to avoid trying anything new. 

How would you react if you saw Will Ferrell dressed like an elf acting foolish around New York City? Apparently, a lot of real New Yorkers experienced just that toward the beginning of “Elf.” After Buddy arrives in the Big Apple, there’s a montage of him doing silly things, like waving at a guy hailing a cab and hopping through a crosswalk. And they accomplished this by forming a small crew and just shooting Ferrell doing whatever he could.

Everyone in that sequence other than Ferrell was just going about their day. That includes the old man with the white beard wearing all red whom Buddy mistakes for the real Santa Claus. He was a normal guy, and now, he’s in a famous scene in one of the most popular Christmas movies of the 21st century. 

Will Ferrell doesn’t just improvise his own great lines; he knows how to play off other actors going off-script. That’s the case with the mailroom scene in “Elf” in which Buddy and one of the surly workers, played by Mark Acheson, drink booze on the clock. Acheson’s only scripted line was “Work release,” but Jon Favreau had him riff with Ferrell. The result was the mailroom worker telling Buddy, “I’m 26 years old. I got nothing to show for it.”

The joke is that Acheson is clearly older than 26, and years later, he told People, “The producers wanted to axe the whole scene because of that. I think, ‘Who is gonna believe this guy is 26?’ I mean, seriously. I believe I was 46 at the time.” Favreau made sure the scene stayed in, allowing a little bit more improv to make it into “Elf.”

“Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” may not be based on a true story, but moments of truth manage to peek through, like how you shouldn’t drink milk on a hot day. After getting fired from his news anchor position, Will Ferrell’s title character wanders through the streets of San Diego drinking milk straight from the carton. He then loudly proclaims, “Milk was a bad choice.”

That line wasn’t in the script. Ferrell’s co-star David Koechner told The Huffington Post, “We’re shooting in San Pedro and it’s hotter than hell — and Will just said it for real. It’s perfect, because it was an honest moment from the human Will Ferrell speaking through Ron Burgundy.” Ron drinking milk of all things is funny enough on its own, but the line makes for the perfect punctuation mark to the scene. 

“Anchorman” is absolutely the kind of movie where you can get a bunch of funny actors together and just see what comes to mind in the moment. Will Ferrell improvised plenty of lines, including a now-iconic moment when he’s crying while calling Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) from a phone booth. When asked where he is, Ron responds, “I’m in a glass case of emotion!”

That moment was a long time coming, as they actually kept the phone booth prop in a truck for weeks waiting for the right time to film the scene. Obviously, nothing changes in the plot even if they couldn’t have filmed it. But “Anchorman” just wouldn’t feel the same if people weren’t quoting that line for months after it came out.  

One of the best “Anchorman” scenes is when Ron Burgundy and his news team get in a huge fight with other San Diego news teams. It’s an epic battle, and it has the best coda, in which the main four newscasters hang out afterward dissecting how it got out of control so fast. But there’s one line that almost made Paul Rudd break character because he wasn’t expecting it, when Ferrell says, “I’m proud of you, fellas. You all kept your head on a swivel, and that’s what you gotta do when you find yourself in a vicious cockfight.”

When it comes to improvising, it’s not just about finding the right moment. It’s about keeping it together when someone surprises you with a great line so that you don’t have to do another take and potentially lose some of the magic.

Will Ferrell has a commanding presence, even when he’s only in a movie for five minutes. He has a brief but incredible appearance in “Wedding Crashers” when John (Owen Wilson) visits a wedding crashing legend, Chazz (Ferrell). His role’s all the more astonishing because the crew didn’t know if he’d be able to do the part until the night before filming. Nicolas Cage was reportedly a back-up, which would have been an entirely different kind of amazing. 

But Ferrell dominated, improvising many of Chazz’s lines. The most notable example is when he leans over his shoulder and shouts, “Ma, meatloaf!” unexpectedly. It caught the camera crew off-guard, and if you pay close attention to that moment, you can see the camera slightly jiggle. That’s due to cinematographer Julio Macat losing it at Ferrell’s sheer comedic brilliance.

If you need any proof that “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is an amazing film, just know it’s Christopher Nolan’s favorite comedy. Will Ferrell plays the title character, who ascends to the heights of NASCAR only to come crashing down. Like “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” is a collaboration between Ferrell and director Adam McKay, so you better believe the actors were given plenty of chances to improvise additional jokes. 

The end credits are filled with extra scenes and bloopers that didn’t make the cut, many of which just play like the actors riffing. That includes some fake commercials where Ferrell and his co-star John C. Reilly try to hold it together while talking about roving gangs of dogs. It may not have made it into the actual movie, but rest assured, plenty of on-the-fly lines did. 

For a comedy about male ice skaters, “Blades of Glory” had a surprising amount of drama behind the scenes. Busy Philipps took screenwriters Craig and Jeff Cox to task for minimizing her contributions to the film, with her ultimately getting a “Story By” credit and apology. But with Will Ferrell in the cast, many of the film’s lines got changed anyhow. 

Reports suggest Ferrell altered around 88% of his dialogue in the film. It makes sense to a degree. His character, Chazz Michael Michaels (no relation to Chazz from “Wedding Crashers” as far as we know), fits into the typical Ferrell archetype of an immature manchild. Perhaps the most impressive improvisation is the discussion surrounding Fergie’s “My Humps” when Chazz says, “Nobody knows what it means, but it’s provocative.” 

“Step Brothers” is another Will Ferrell classic that has a healthy dose of improvisation. Everyone in the cast got in on the action, and in fact, the crew filmed so many unscripted moments that Kodak sent them a bottle of champagne for using so much film stock. When watching the movie, it’s easy to see where this improvisation came from because so much of it just seems like Ferrell and John C. Reilly riffing off each other. 

In one scene, the pair try to go to sleep but instead hurl insults at one another. The language hasn’t aged well, but it seems like the kind of scene the two actors excel at. All we really need to know from the sequence is that the two hate each other, so they can really say whatever as long as that point comes across.

It’s unclear how much improvisational experience Mark Wahlberg has compared to someone like Will Ferrell, but fortunately, all he needed to do is react to one of Ferrell’s funniest lines in “The Other Guys.” Terry (Wahlberg) lambasts Allen (Ferrell) for being a pathetic tuna while he’s a vicious lion. Rather than get offended, Allen flips this on Terry and goes into a whole spiel about how tunas could probably beat up a lion since lions don’t belong in the ocean anyway. 

Director Adam McKay confirmed Ferrell’s bit is unscripted. McKay yelled out some ideas for Ferrell to play with, and that one was good enough to make it into the finished film. And it’s made all the better by cutting away to Wahlberg’s stone-faced expression while Ferrell’s going into all the inaccuracies of his previous statement. 

Some fans didn’t like Will Ferrell’s brief arc on “The Office.” However, it did lead to some pretty funny moments, including a scene in Season 7’s “Training Day” when new branch manager Deangelo (Ferrell) asks Andy (Ed Helms) to do funny things for his amusement. Andy proceeds to pour hot coffee on himself, after which Deangelo hands him a soap dispenser and tells him to “drink some soap.”

Other moments, like Andy drenching himself in coffee, were planned, but the soap bit was entirely unscripted. Helms responds by squirting soap in his mouth, but since no one planned for that to happen, there’s actually soap inside there. With pre-planning, they could have just filled it with water or something, but it’s a testament to Helms’ commitment that he never breaks character while in the middle of a hilarious scene. 

It’s funny when an unscripted moment makes it into the film, but to really get a sense of Will Ferrell’s improvisational acumen, fans need to check out what got left out. There’s an outtakes reel for “Eastbound and Down” that sees Ashley Schaeffer (Ferrell) go into a bizarre monologue about feeling tension in his “plums.” 

Of course, it’s near-impossible for any of his co-stars to make it through the speech without breaking character, so we get to see Ferrell run through a few different versions of the same monologue. It seems like he’s improvising on the spot, keeping the essence of the speech intact while changing some minor details. 

Seeing as “Zoolander 2” flopped at the box office, many people probably didn’t see a big kiss between Will Ferrell’s Mugatu and Kristen Wiig’s Alexanya Atoz. Mugatu walks into a room to find Alexanya wearing a ridiculous headpiece. Mugatu awkwardly moves it out of the way, and the two proceed to kiss and scream simultaneously.

That wasn’t in the script, as Kristen Wiig revealed in an interview with On Demand Entertainment. She recalled, “I think [the script] said, like, just go crazy.” She then confirms that they mostly used what they did for the first take, suggesting there might have been other versions where they did things a little differently. But kissing while screaming through an awkward piece of fashion was definitely the way to go. 

Our final Will Ferrell unscripted moment isn’t available to see … yet. It comes from his hilarious cameo on “The Boys” Season 4 where he’s playing A-Train’s (Jessie T. Usher) coach in a biopic. The fake movie clearly pokes fun at Oscar bait films, with Ferrell playing a fictionalized version of himself who really wants to win an Academy Award. But his moment on “The Boys” could have been even longer had an improvised kiss been left in the final cut. 

Showrunner Eric Kripke explained how P.J. Byrne, who plays the movie’s director Adam Bourke, psychs up Ferrell, and in a tender moment, the two begin making out. Sadly, the unscripted beat got cut, and it’s nowhere to be found in the blooper reel that Prime Video released for Season 4. Maybe someday we’ll get the Bourke Cut to see the big moment.