Comedy legend Will Ferrell spoke exclusively to Contactmusic about his new movie Daddy’s Home, in which he stars alongside Mark Wahlberg. Out on December 25th in the US and the following day in the UK, it concerns a father and a stepdad who compete for the affections of their child.
“There’s so many blended families now, whether it’s a stepmom or stepdad,” Ferrell said of the movies premise. “The dynamic of that, and how it can be tricky at times, and then at other times it can turn out to be a good thing, it’s fun to examine that as a comedy.”
Will Ferrell stars in ‘Daddy’s Home’, out on December 25th in the US
“The stepparent has always been vilified, in a way. It’s ‘the evil stepmom’ or ‘the evil stepdad’, y’know. But we’re turning the tables on that, in the sense that Brad [Ferrell’s character, the stepdad] is the sweetest guy, the best parent ever, who’s so into being a dad, he loves it.”
Suddenly, Wahlberg’s character Dusty, the child’s biological father, comes back into the picture. About his character, Ferrell said: “He rides a motorcycle, he can fix anything around the house, knows everything from electronics to hardware to computers. I can’t really compete, and Mark just fills that checklist, and he doesn’t even have to say anything, it’s just already all there on screen.”
More: Watch Will Ferrell make his return to ‘Saturday Night Live’ as George W. Bush
About Wahlberg himself, Ferrell had nothing but praise, although he found his co-star’s gruelling fitness regime fascinating. “I’ve been trying to work out consistently during this movie, just to stay in shape in a general sense, but Mark is crazy, he’s up at 3am, he’s done a two hour workout before I’ve even gotten into the ‘rem’ stage of my sleep! It’s nuts!”
“Mark’s one of those people who doesn’t worry about having to look or act cool, he was just born that way… He wears a perfectly faded leather jacket for real, because he’s worn it for 20 years, it’s not something he bought at Banana Republic, y’know, artificially broken in!”
Mark Wahlberg stars alongside Will Ferrell in ‘Daddy’s Home’
Finally, about that incident in filming when Ferrell shocked a basketball audience by hitting a cheerleader in the head with a fluffed shot… it was all staged, of course, but the producers went out of the way to make it look as un-planned as possible. “We had six minutes to shoot this half-time scene,” Ferrell explained, “and Paul Scheer played our crazy DJ, and the audience not only has no idea that I’m not going to make the half-court shot, but also nail this cheerleader in the head. It wasn’t a real basketball [chuckles] but a fake, soft(ish) basketball.”
“It was amazing to play that live, in front of a crowd, who had no idea, because we just prompted them with ‘please stay in your seats as they shoot a scene for the upcoming Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg movie and watch Will Ferrell attempt a half-court shot’. That’s all we told them. We didn’t tell them I was drunk in the scene, slurring my words, telling them I’m gonna ‘give my wife a baby’ and all these inappropriate things, and then I just pegged this cheerleader, who was a stuntperson. They went berserk!”
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