Watch Will Ferrell flub his first line on ‘SNL’ in new doc

Before he became a Saturday Night Live legend, Will Ferrell debuted on the show with a resounding thud — and now, footage of his unceremonious entrance to Studio 8H is back in circulation.

In the third episode of new documentary series SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, the Anchorman star discussed his early work on the sketch show, recalling how he stumbled over his first-ever line on live television. “I’m the first person that’s going to be on camera for that season for this brand-new cast,” Ferrell rememberd. “Lorne [Michaels] walks by, in an effort to be funny, and says, ‘No pressure, but the whole show’s riding on you.’ And just walks away.”

Ferrell thought the executive producer’s jab was hilarious. “It cracked me up!” he recalled. “It really made me laugh. But I’m sitting there, and they’re counting the show down. And then all of a sudden, I felt the enormity of this moment, being on live television, and I’m like, ‘Oh, no. This is crazy!’ And so I totally garble the lines.”

The documentary features footage of that very moment from beginning of the season 21 premiere, with Ferrell playing a newscaster in the “O.J. Today” cold open. In the footage, Ferrell says, “Good afternoon, it’s been a busy day in court. The trial which ended yesterday with the ruh—prosecution’s…”

That moment from the episode isn’t present in the Sept. 30, 1995, episode that’s currently available on Peacock — instead, the streaming version begins with Ferrell saying a later line, “The defense rebuts the rebuttal, next on ‘O.J. Today.'”

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Ferrell recently looked back on his mistake during an interview with Travis and Jason Kelce’s New Heights podcast. “Lorne came back, and he was like, ‘Are you okay?'” the actor recalled. “I’m like, ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. I dunno what happened.'”

In the doc, Ferrell reflects on his opening night nerves. “So my first moment on Saturday Night Live, I mess up, right out of the gate,” he said. “[The] entertainment section wrote a review, and it said, ‘Most Annoying Newcomer: Will Ferrell.'”

That quote came from a recap written by former Entertainment Weekly editor Ken Tucker, who critiqued Ferrell’s “yelled-insult shtick” for becoming “intolerably annoying halfway through the debut.” The recap, which briefly appears on screen in the documentary, also blasted David Spade for his “extraordinary smugness” and “homophobic Unabomber routine” and praised newcomers Cheri Oteri and Molly Shannon for their new “instant SNL classic” sketch “Leg Up.”

Ferrell took Tucker’s words to stride. “I kinda had a choice,” he said in the doc. “I was either gonna take that to heart, or I was gonna just use it as bulletin board material. So sure enough, I had a placard made, ‘Most Annoying Newcomer,’ and I put it on the door of my office. And I was like, ‘Okay, if you think I’m annoying now, just wait. I’m gonna be so annoying.'”

Ferrell’s former castmate Rachel Dratch shared her admiration for the Step Brothers star’s fearlessness. “He would just come up with the most original ideas,” she said. “Like ‘Cowbell.’ He would go off and write by himself, and just, ‘Well here’s something I think is funny. This is really weird.’ He was inspiring, to think like, ‘Okay, whatever you’re thinking, you can go weirder.'”

The Talladega Nights star looked back on his own comedic motivations. “I never was governed internally by, ‘What do I think people wanna see?'” he explains. “Just, ‘What makes me laugh?'”

SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is now streaming on Peacock.