Will Ferrell reacted to his Will & Harper documentary’s Oscar snub with some comedy, in true Will Ferrell fashion.
“It’s such a good documentary. It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in years. It was beautiful. It was timely. It was heartfelt. I was inspired by it,” Stephen Colbert told Ferrell, 57, on a recent episode of The Late Show. “Tell me, how was the Oscar nomination?” he asked the actor.
Ferrell dryly replied, “We didn’t get it.”
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As a fan of the film, Colbert, 60, quipped, “Well, f— those guys. Right? F— the Academy. Say it.” Ferrell, for his part, took a jab at “the doc branch” of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, joking, “You don’t wanna hang out with the doc branch. What a bunch of losers.”
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Continuing the bit, Ferrell said he hoped “there’s some of them here tonight” before telling the audience, “If you’re a member of the doc branch, suck it.”
Bitter feelings aside, Ferrell couldn’t be prouder of the documentary, calling Will & Harper “one of the best things I ever got to be a part of, and I loved every second of it.”
Will & Harper, which premiered on Netflix in September 2024, follows Ferrell and his close friend Harper Steele as they embark on a cross-country road trip. While traveling across the U.S., the pair dive deep into their friendship and explore how their relationship has changed since Steele came out as a trans woman. As of Thursday, February 6, the film sits at a 99 percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The film was included on the 2025 Oscars shortlist for Best Documentary Feature Film and Best Original Song for Kristen Wiig’s “Harper and Will Go West.” The movie ultimately didn’t make the official nominations list, with the films Black Box Diaries, No Other Land, Porcelain War, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and Sugarcane filling out the Best Documentary Feature Film category.
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Ferrell’s friendship with Steele, 63, has changed his outlook on comedy. After notably dressing in drag on Saturday Night Live to portray former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the actor told The New York Times in September 2024 that doing drag for the sake of a bit is something he “wouldn’t choose to do now.”
Steele agreed that using drag as the butt of a joke is “absolutely not funny,” telling the outlet, “It’s absolutely a way that we should be able to live in the world.”
While the film highlights Steele’s experience as a trans woman, she told The Independent that friendship is the film’s core. “We just wanted to address what it’s like for two people who are friends — what all of this means to us, and to our friendship moving forward. I needed him to see the joy I was experiencing,” she told the outlet in an interview published in September 2024. “And I also wanted to demonstrate to my friend here that I was still funny. And probably funnier than him.”
The 97th Academy Awards air live on ABC Sunday, March 2, at 7 p.m. ET.
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