Adam McKay seems a little unsettled by how much coverage his friendship—or lack thereof—with Will Ferrell has gotten.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the film director said just as much: “It’s kind of crazy to see how much has been reported on this,” he remarked, referring to the Vanity Fair profile from November, where he explained why he and Ferrell no longer speak.
“As clean as we both tried to make it go, there were moments afterward where we weren’t exactly chummy,” McKay said. “I kept trying to frame it like, ‘Hey, it’s OK. It’s its natural conclusion,’ but as I would say it, it didn’t quite feel right. It felt like a breakup. I’m looking forward to when the dust has settled. I’d love to just go watch a Lakers game with him and kick back and get back to our old kind of rhythm. But, yeah, I can’t lie, at the end of it, we were both kind of bummed out.”
McKay’s hope was that people would pay more attention to his upcoming Netflix film and climate change comedy, Don’t Look Up, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. It’s slated for a limited theatrical release on Dec. 10 and a Netflix debut on Dec. 24.
“We made Don’t Look Up to hopefully get people talking about the climate crisis—literally the biggest threat to life in human history—and to see so much made about two comedy guys not talking about a TV show is a scary sign of our times. I love Ferrell. Always will. I had the best, most fun run of my life with him. Yes, I wish I had talked to him about it out of respect, but we were both focused on our new companies and life just took over.”
McKay told THR that because of the state of the world, he wanted to divert his attention from “those old-style comedies” that he made with Ferrell. “I was just very excited to go at things from a bunch of different directions, and, God bless Will Ferrell, he just didn’t have that same appetite that I had. Will’s the greatest, most laid-back guy. And he’s just like, ‘Well, I like producing a couple things, but I don’t know if I want to do 20 things.’”
McKay and Ferrell’s partnership spanned 25 years, where the pair worked on classics like Anchorman and Step Brothers, and even Saturday Night Live. They disbanded their partnership as Gary Sanchez Productions in 2019, and then had a complete falling out due to casting in the upcoming HBO limited series about the Showtime Lakers.
