Will Ferrell is explaining why he showed up to a Los Angeles Kings game dressed up as a disheveled Buddy the Elf.
In a recent episode of the New Heights podcast, the 57-year-old actor told co-hosts Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce about revisiting his Elf character at a game last month between the Kings and the Philadelphia Flyers and the social media frenzy that followed.
“Buddy the Elf got laid off, I think, from the North Pole,” joked Ferrell at the 2:23 mark in the video linked here. “He’s having a pull from his beer, smoking a cig.”
He continued, “I get these weird ideas every now and then. I told my wife—’cause we’re season ticket holders at the L.A. Kings, we have seats right on the glass, which are amazing.
I said, ‘Gosh, over the break. You know what? It'd be funny if I just got like a Buddy the Elf costume and didn't shave for like a week, and I'm just sitting there with like a candy cigarette. And I'm just gonna, like, sit there for a period and see how people react. And that was it.”
The Saturday Night Live alum said that the reaction was “insane.”
“They’re like, ‘What is he doing? Is he promoting something?’ But occasionally I just like to do weird things like that just to stir it up,” he added.
Ferrell’s stunt also had some fans online believing that this was his way of teasing a sequel to the 2003 hit Christmas comedy film. In 2021, however, Ferrell turned down a $29 million offer for an Elf sequel over alleged conflicts with director Jon Favreau.
At the time, Ferrell told the Hollywood Reporter, “I would have had to promote the movie from an honest place, which would’ve been, like, ‘Oh no, it’s not good. I just couldn’t turn down that much money.’ And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.’”