Will Ferrell is no longer interested in performing in drag for laughs. During an interview on The New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast alongside his longtime friend and former “Saturday Night Live” head writer Harper Steele, Ferrell expressed a bit of regret over the “Janet Reno’s Fantasies” sketch from Season 23 of the sketch comedy show. The sketch featured Ferrell in drag as the eponymous attorney general, with his appearance dressing up as a woman being used for laughs.
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“That’s something I wouldn’t choose to do now,” Ferrell said when The Times noted the character “hits a false note now.”
“This kind of bums me out,” Steele added. “I understand the laugh is a drag laugh. It’s, ‘Hey, look at this guy in a dress, and that’s funny.’ It’s absolutely not funny. It’s absolutely a way that we should be able to live in the world. However, with performers and actors, I do like a sense of play.”
“This is an interesting question to me,” Steele continued. “Do queer people like ‘The Birdcage,’ or do they not? Robin Williams, at least as far as we know, was not a gay man, and yet he spent about half of his comedy career doing a swishy gay guy on camera. Do people think that’s funny, or is it just hurtful? I’ve heard from gay men that it was funny, and I’ve heard from gay men that it was hurtful. I am purple-haired woke, but I wonder if sometimes we take away the joy of playing when we take away some of the range that performers, especially comedy performers, can do.”
Steele came out as transgender 30 years into her friendship with Ferrell, which is now the subject of the acclaimed documentary “Will & Harper.” The movie, which was bought by Netflix after its premiere at Sundance earlier this year, finds the two comedians on a road trip across America as they rediscover their friendship following Steele’s transition.
Ferrell told The Times that he’s certain there’s “a fair amount” of sketches from his “SNL” tenure “where you’d lament the choice.” He later quipped: “I mean, in a way, the cast — you’re kind of given this assignment. So I’m going to blame the writers.”
“Yeah, he’s not culpable at all,” Steele playfully responded before saying on a more serious note: “I wrote Monica Lewinsky stuff I wasn’t proud of. I wrote some good Britney Spears stuff and some stuff that I’m not as proud of. I wrote some Clinton things I wasn’t proud of. I’m just moving on. I have to.”
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Steele and Ferrell met during their days on “SNL,” which Harper wrote for from 1995 to 2008. Harper came out as transgender in 2022.
“Harper emailed a lot of her close friends with the headline: ‘Here’s a Weird One,'” Ferrell told Variety at Sundance earlier this year. “She went on to explain she was going to transition and we were all of course excited to hear the news and surprised to hear the news. All of us were extremely supportive and expressed love…but that sort of opened the questions like, how can we help you? What do you need us to do?”
Ferrell said he had “zero knowledge” about the trans community before Harper came out to him.
“I had met trans people, but I didn’t have anyone personally in my life,” Ferrell said. “So this was all new territory for me, which is why I think this film is so exciting for us to kind of put out there in the world. It’s a chance all of us in the cis community to be able to ask questions and also just to listen and be there as a friend to discuss this journey.”
“Will & Harper” streams Sept. 27 on Netflix.
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