In a 2011 interview with Splitsider, Marc Maron mentioned Will Ferrell as someone he really wanted to have as a guest on his podcast, only he hadn’t been able to get him on. Well, yesterday it finally happened. Will Ferrell sat down with Maron for an hour and 18 minute interview on the WTF podcast.
The whole thing was interesting — Ferrell was engaging and thoughtful and, of course, funny — and thankfully devoid of him doing it in character as Ron Burgundy, as we’ve all had our fill of that sort of thing of late. Among my favorite parts of the interview was an anecdote Ferrell shared about the advice his dad, a musician, gave him when he finally made the decision to commit himself fully to making a career in comedy.
“Well, if it was all based on talent, I wouldn’t worry about you. Because I’ve watched a lot of your shows, and I really think there’s something there. But you have to remember that there’s a lot of luck involved. And if you get to a certain point in 3 years, 4 years, 5 years and you just feel like it’s too hard, don’t worry about quitting. Don’t feel like you’ve failed and it’s okay to pick up and do something different.”
Ferrell added that “for some reason that took the pressure off” and the anxiety he had felt about possibly failing in show business faded away. “All of a sudden I was just like, ‘Oh, this is a crapshoot anyway, so let’s just relax and try not squeeze the bat too hard and just have fun and throw it away. And so I kind of tried to use that as my approach.” Obviously, that philosophy has served him well.
You can download the entire interview here, or listen to it in the YouTube embed below.