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Will Ferrell is getting quite accustomed to this whole sports spoof movie thing. After taking on the worlds of NASCAR (“Talladega Nights”) and male figure skating (“Blades of Glory”), Ferrell is back — alongside stars Woody Harrelson and André Benjamin — in “Semi-Pro” an R-rated take on the world of 1970s ABA basketball. The film, which opens nationwide on Friday, Feb. 29, features Ferrell as Jackie Moon, the owner of the fictional Flint Tropics, a team that manages to stay afloat via a variety of wacky promotional nights, including but not limited to Ferrell wrestling a bear and attempting to jump over the team's cheerleading squad on roller skates. Before the film opened, 210SA sat down with Ferrell in Austin to get his thoughts on sports movies, fame and the possibility of him opening for Justin Timberlake.
 

Why a basketball movie this time around?

I've known (script writer Scott Armstrong) since “Old School,” and he wrote that and “Starsky and Hutch.” He said one day he was going to write a '70s basketball comedy ..... and I said, “I don't even have to read it.” I've always wanted to do a basketball movie, but the only bad thing for me was that this was right as I was shooting “Blades of Glory,” so now, I'm getting the sports questions over and over again. I'm not obsessed with sports movies. They're fun to do, but it's not a, “I'm going to do them from now on” type of thing.

You seem like kind of a cerebral guy.

Highly. Thank you.

I finally just started to stop coming up with other jobs I could do if this all goes to s**t. I would constantly be like, “Oh, I could drive a cab.” I was thinking of life because I live in mortal fear that people all of a sudden will hate you and think you're not funny anymore. What would I do if I had another job? I studied sports journalism in college, so I probably would have done something in the world of sports, and I might have even tried to have been a coach. Something like that, or a poet. I love writing haikus. Not really.

What other jobs have you had?

I had a slew. I was a bank teller, a valet parker, and I worked in an art auction house as an appraisal coordinator. We'd send appraisers out, and they would bring appraisals of art back, and I would type them up. I was pretty bad at the job because I would just leave and go on auditions.
 
What's it like to get back to the “Old School” type of R-rated humor, where you can tell someone to suck it and that you'll kill their family (an actual scene from “Semi-Pro”)?

It was great. In some ways, having to stay within PG-13 makes you have to be more creative. It's actually a good exercise. That being said, I've done so many PG-13 movies that it's nice not to have to worry about anything you say or anything you do. “Stepbrothers,” a film that comes out in July with John C. Reilly, it was Adam McKay and I's first R-rated movie (together). We watched a cut and it had way too many “F” words, like we were addicted to saying it every other line.

With “Love Me Sexy” (a song from “Semi-Pro”) on iTunes, are you gearing yourself up for a musical?

You'll be the first to hear this, but I'm going on tour with Justin Timberlake, opening for him and closing for him. Because he brought sexy back, and I did “Love Me Sexy,” it's the Let's Bring Love Me Sexy Back tour.

You're enormously famous.

I'm pretty huge, yeah.

But you've been famous for a while. Is it any weirder now being more famous but being used to it, than being small but it being new?

I don't know. I think anyone who gets used to that type of thing is heading down the wrong track. It's just still the weirdest thing ever. I just had a new wave of it recently because I went to Ireland for two weeks with my dad and brother. “Anchorman” is the biggest thing over there, so people would drive by and say, “I want to be on you.” ..... There were radio contests like “track Will Ferrell's whereabouts in Ireland.” It was so flattering and yet, I'm like, “This is weird.” We went up to Northern Ireland ..... and one guy pulled up and was like, “Hey! Hey! What the f**k are you doing here?” like he was angry with me. I'm like, “I'm just visiting, is there a problem?” He's like, “No, I can't believe you're here.” He was stopping traffic and all this stuff. But I've been lucky in the sense that it's been really gradual. I started off being on “Saturday Night Live,” where you can't get too famous too fast because it's late-night TV. It took five seasons for people to think I was on for two years. I'd have to say I'm lucky in that regard. It didn't happen in a rush where it overwhelmed you. I'm more used to it than I've ever been, and I'm still not used to it all at the same time.
 
Words: Clint Hale | 210SA