Will Ferrell's 1994 SNL Audition Surfaced and Boy Is It Embarrassing For Everyone Involved
Before starring in hit movies such as Elf and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Will Ferrell made a name for himself as a regular on Saturday Night Live.
His impressions of George W Bush, Notorious B.I.G., Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein, among others, rightly earned him praise throughout his seven years on the show.
But the fact that he ever made it onto SNL after an audition that can only be described as embarrassingly cringeworthy is something of a mystery.
Indeed, when the video of it surfaced, it's hard to believe those who chose him for the show weren't just as humiliated as Ferrell himself. It's not even like they can claim they saw something in his audition that the untrained eye would have missed. Because, just like anybody watching the audition tape today, all they saw was a grown man pretending to be a cat.
Sure, there was the brief dialogue at the start and again towards the end that told us this character was some sort of high-flying exec or businessman. But aside from that, it was a man playing with cat toys and occasionally lying on the ground.
At first, it seems obvious that it's not just that; that there's going to be some kind of punchline; a joke maybe; just…anything funny. But no, he acts like a cat and then announces that his audition is over.
It's a truly bizarre video and hardly the stuff of Hollywood.
The clip actually goes on for just over one minute and twenty seconds. But it feels so much longer than that – in part because there is literally no reaction from the onlookers. There was a brief flurry of appreciation (no doubt for nothing more than his time and for keeping it short) after Ferrell got up off the floor and said "Thank you very much".
But that sounded as though it was more out of pity than anything else.
One thing we do need to applaud the comic actor for though, is that he got up and walked away without a hint of embarrassment on his face. It was almost as if he was satisfied with the performance. Even if it's hard to imagine that he looks back on it now with anything even close to pride.
Still, it got him the job. And the rest, as they say, is history. Which is probably where Ferrell wishes this tape was still hidden away.