The ‘SNL’ mistake that Will Ferrell loved most
“Breaking” is a not-so-proud tradition in the halls of Saturday Night Live. The nature of doing a live comedy show means that, for better or worse, whatever is going on in the studio is going to be broadcast to millions of watchers. Inevitably, that means that a few errant chuckles have made their way into the world, whether it’s David Spade covering his face during Chris Farley’s manic Matt Foley skit or Rachel Dratch struggling to maintain her composure during a particularly infamous ‘Debbie Downer’ sketch.
Jimmy Fallon was long thought to be the king of breaking, with him and co-star Horatio Sanz often cracking each other up during live shows. In the television documentary SNL in the 2000s: Time and Again, Fallon explained that he would often try and think of Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and executive producer, while he was breaking. Michaels has a notorious distaste for breaking, and those that fall victim often incur his wrath.
“Jimmy’s the only guy who gets me to break,” frequent host Justin Timberlake said in the oral history Live From New York. “Actually, I break more than you would think. I broke one time doing one of the Barry Gibb sketches. I broke on the ‘Family Feud’ sketch because Jimmy holds the record for breaking on the show… I mean, there’s a certain thing that happens with him where it’s almost like the more he breaks the funnier the sketch gets. It’s a weird thing.”
On the opposite end of that spectrum is Will Ferrell. During his seven-year run on SNL, Ferrell acquired an unflappable reputation. Whether he was spewing out ridiculous faux-paus as George W. Bush or imitating a cat with a toy, Ferrell never seemed to get shaken. There were a few exceptions: one version of ‘The Lovers’ sketch found Dratch and Ferrell unable to hold in their laughter. Another came during an equipment malfunction, as Ferrell explained on the YouTube series ‘Hot Ones’.
“There was a character I had done on a ‘Weekend Update.’ He suffered from a disease called voice immodulation,” Ferrell explains. “I started doing this character, and the glasses I was wearing fogged up so much that I couldn’t see the cue cards. So, that just started making me laugh so hard that I totally broke.”
It wasn’t the only time that Ferrell broke character during a sketch. During the famous ‘More Cowbell’ sketch, everyone from Jimmy Fallon to Christopher Walken can be seen trying to suppress their laughter at Ferrell’s husky percussionist “exploring the room”. At one point, Ferrell lets a smile and a chuckle slip out as Fallon struggles to maintain his composure. Unlike Fallon, Ferrell is able to reel it in and get his straight face back.
Check out Ferrell explaining his time on SNL down below.
