Will Ferrell Likens His ‘SNL’ Audition to ‘Prisoner Torture Technique’

Will Ferrell may be lauded for his 1994 Saturday Night Live audition video, but the man himself doesn’t have the best memories of the moment he took the stage in a near empty room to show his comedic chops for the job.

On the newest episode of New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce, Ferrell sat down to dish about the audition. “It was almost like a prisoner torture technique,” he said, “I just had to, like fight through it.”

Ferrell would ultimately earn a spot on the cast, where he remained from 1995 to 2002—but at the time of his audition, it didn’t seem like he would get the gig, he said Friday.

“I’m on the ground in that studio playing around like a cat,” Ferrell said recalling the audition. “Lorne Michaels purposely had no one in the studio to create the tension of late night television, like he wanted to create the pressure of what it’s like to be on Saturday Night, like live TV,” he said adding that the only people in the studio with him were “a camera operator and a sound guy.”

“So I’m in a void rolling around going, ‘Oh my God, I’m going back to L.A. This is not [working],’” Ferrell explained, admitting he wasn’t feeling certain of the outcome post-audition. “I had no idea if I did well or not, and you just left going, ‘Oh, well I guess they’ll call me.’”

Ferrell did, of course, get that call to join the show—and upon reflection, he now thinks he knows which part of the audition landed him the gig.

The “sketch that I think really got me the job,” he said, was “this dad at a barbecue yelling at his kids to get off the shed.” His very first SNL episode as a cast member featured the character.

Besides his now famous “Get off the Shed” guy, Ferrell would go on to play characters including Harry Caray and Senator Ted Kennedy.

Now that his days as an SNL cast member are long behind him and he’s become a bonafide movie star, Ferrell has the cache to pull a noticeable stunt or two when he sees fit—the latest of which was his appearance as a grumpy Buddy the Elf at an L.A. Kings game last month.

The bit was confusing for some Elf fans, as Ferrell put a spin on the usually cheery character, opting instead for a five o’clock shadow, a grumpy mug, and a faux cigarette. He revealed what he was thinking before dressing up as the character, on New Heights.

“I get these weird ideas every now and then,” he said. “[He thought] it’d be funny if I just got a Buddy the Elf costume and didn’t shave for like a week, and I’m just sitting there with a candy cigarette,” he recalled thinking. “‘I’m just gonna sit there for a period and see how people react.’ And that was it.”

Ferrell noted “the reaction” to his stunt “was insane,” and seemed amused by people’s confusion. “They were like, ‘What is he doing? Is he promoting something?’ But occasionally I just like to do weird things like that, just to stir it up.”