Will Ferrell doesn’t seem to be considering being a drag woman on a Saturday Night Live sketch, or ever for that case, to make people laugh.
In a conversation with his long-time friend and former head writer of Saturday Night Live, Harper Steele, on The New York Times’ The Interview podcast, Ferrell acknowledged feeling a little sorry about the “Janet Reno’s Fantasies” skit from Season 23 of the sketch comedy show.
In the segment, Ferrell played the title role of attorney general in drag, dressed up as a woman to make an amusing appearance.
“That’s something I wouldn’t choose to do now,” Ferrell said.
“This kind of bums me out,” Steele chimed in, who came out as a transgender 30 years into friendship with Ferrell. “I understand the laugh is a drag laugh. It’s, ‘Hey, look at this guy in a dress, and that’s funny.’ It’s absolutely not funny. It’s absolutely a way that we should be able to live in the world. However, with performers and actors, I do like a sense of play.”
“This is an interesting question to me,” Steele continued. “Do queer people like ‘The Birdcage,’ or do they not? Robin Williams, at least as far as we know, was not a gay man, and yet he spent about half of his comedy career doing a swishy gay guy on camera. Do people think that’s funny, or is it just hurtful? I’ve heard from gay men that it was funny, and I’ve heard from gay men that it was hurtful.”
‘I am purple-haired woke, but I wonder if sometimes we take away the joy of playing when we take away some of the range that performers, especially comedy performers, can do,” she added.
