Will Ferrell Thought the Last Dab Was Just Ceremonial. It Was Not.

Will Ferrell arrived at Hot Ones with two strikes already against him. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was supposed to be there, bailed sick. And Ferrell himself disclosed, right at the top, that he has a very active ulcer. Sean Evans told him not to worry about it. Ferrell said ‘great.’ Neither of them meant any of that. What followed was a man in steady, mounting physiological distress trying to answer questions about Harry Caray and anchorman lore while Da Bomb quietly dismantled his central nervous system. It is genuinely one of the more watchable celebrity suffering formats television has produced.

The Will Ferrell lore is legitimately good, and Evans earns his keep pulling it out. Ferrell drank out of boredom between takes while standing naked waiting for Snoop Dogg to finish playing video games in his trailer during Old School. He and Chris Kattan roamed a Pasadena mall as Santa and elf, just walking in and out of stores. The original Anchorman pitch involved newsmen being stalked down a mountain by chimpanzees armed with Chinese throwing stars. Hollywood said no. These are not apocryphal; they are delivered with the flat matter-of-factness of a man who has lived a genuinely unusual life and mostly finds it funny.

it was going to be like a movie about newsmen meets like the movie alive where they have to survive in the mountains yeah and it was all about trying to survive and get down the mountain while being stalked by chimpanzees with chinese throwing stars

The Ulcer Did Not Care About His Good Attitude

Ferrell’s heat tolerance starts reasonable and collapses spectacularly right on schedule at Da Bomb, which is where everyone collapses. He stops answering the Friends versus Seinfeld question mid-sentence. He doesn’t catch Evans’s follow-up question at all. He just sits there, radiating heat, blinking. His actual review of Seinfeld, delivered while his face reorganized itself: ‘it was a show about nothing.’ Julia Louis-Dreyfus, watching from home, presumably having the best day of her life.

i literally didn’t even listen here’s your question it’s so hot ah

The most revealing moment is quieter than that. When Evans asks whether Groundlings trained him well for SNL, Ferrell drops something genuinely useful: ‘it’s not like you show up at that show and they assign you three riders just to take care of you, it’s very much feast or famine.’ He knew how to write for himself. That was the advantage. The internet has added new roads into comedy, he says, but there’s still no substitute for a live audience telling you immediately that something doesn’t work. This is not a controversial position. It is, however, a correct one, delivered by someone who has earned the right to say it.

it’s not like you show up at that show and they assign you three riders just to take care of you it’s it’s very much feast or famine

The Ceremony of the Last Dab

At the final wing, Ferrell announces he’s glad he’s already had all three of his children because the Last Dab will render him impotent. He puts the sauce on the outside of the wing only. Evans points out he still has to eat it. Ferrell genuinely believed the tradition was just putting a dollop on and looking at it. ‘I thought it was just more ceremonial,’ he says, with the sincerity of a man who has been lied to by a condiment. He eats it. He finishes. He tells Evans it was ‘absolutely not’ worth it and also ‘a very unique experience,’ which is the most honest celebrity Hot Ones exit interview in recent memory. He was not wrong on either count.

i’m glad i’ve already had all three of my children because i know this will render you impotent