By Kate Rodger
Will Ferrell’s latest comedy The Campaign opened in New Zealand cinemas yesterday.
In the film, Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a US congressman in North Carolina facing off in a political campaign against Marty Huggins, director of the local Tourism Center (Zach Galifianakis).
I spoke to Ferrell about the film, Galifianakis, politics and his career. Below are excerpts from the interview, which can be viewed in full with the attached video.
As it is an actual campaign year in the US, was there a lot of inspiration for this film?
We’ve had a lot of material to choose from over the last two to four to six to eight years. It was fun to finally capitalise on all that. It actually initially started with Zach and I just sitting down wanting to do a movie with each other.
Who is the funniest, you or Zach Galifianakis?
There’s an independent study that was done – this is not just me boasting, you can look it up. But I was found to be 64 percent funnier than Zach. I was shocked, frankly, because I thought it was going to be the other way around. But I’ll take it. I feel very proud because it was pure science.
You’ve made some of the most memorable and hilarious comedy characters and I was wondering if you have a personal favourite?
It’s hard, and it’s nice to be able to say that. There’s so many movies I had a great time doing and I’m lucky that they’ve resonated with people. But probably Ron Burgundy is the one that sticks out the most, just because it was so hard to get made. We had 10 or 11 studios turn Anchorman down in one day when we first had the script. The fact that it has the cult following that it does is why we’re making a sequel. I’ve never made a sequel before so I’m really looking forward to it.
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Watch the full interview.
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