Will Ferrell is looking back on a very brief yet memorable encounter he had with the late actor Gene Hackman.
In a July 22 interview for GQ, Ferrell sat alongside his co-star Luke Wilson as they promoted their new Netflix series, The Hawk. The pair shared some laughs while looking back on some of their past infamous roles while playing a round of “Was I In This Movie?”
Ferrell recalled once being on the set of Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, a comedy that was released in 2001.
The film starred a slew of big-name actors, from Owen and Luke Wilson to Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Alec Baldwin, and of course, the legendary Hackman.
While Ferrell was not part of the cast, he did once stop by the set while working on his film Zoolander.
“I came to ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ set because the same hair people on the ‘Tenenbaums’ were the ‘Zoolander’ hair people. And I had to get my ‘Zoolander’ hair retouched up,” he explained.
“And then I see Luke hitching up his pants, walking over to set. [He said], ‘Yeah, I’m going to walk over to set. I’m not even working today. I just want to… Gene Hackman may leave the movie.’ But he didn’t!” he continued.
Wilson seemed to suggest that Hackman was not always the easiest person to work with.
“He was great. He would just sometimes … he, you know, had a bad temper at times. But great, probably my favorite actor,” he said.
Ferrell then recalled that he “briefly met” Hackman while on set that day.
“He asked me if I was in the picture. ‘Are you doing something in the picture?’ And I go, ‘No, I’m not.’ He was very intimidating,” he noted.
Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa both passed away in early 2025.
