Will Ferrell is playfully taking a stab at Oscar voters for snubbing the Netflix documentary Will & Harper.
The actor recently made a guest appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he jokingly called out The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for not nominating the film.
Will & Harper follows Ferrell and his longtime friend Harper Steele, who embark on a cross-country road trip after Ferrell learns Steele is coming out as a trans woman. Throughout the trip, the duo explores this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship and transition.
After host Stephen Colbert called it “one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in years,” he asked, “How was the Oscar nomination?”
“We didn’t get it,” Ferrell responded, to which Colbert said, “Fuck the Academy!”
“Especially the doc branch,” the You’re Cordially Invited actor quipped. “You don’t want to hang out with the doc branch. What a bunch of losers. I hope there’s some of them here tonight: If you’re a member of the doc branch, suck it.”
While Will & Harper did make the Oscars shortlist for the best documentary feature film category, it ultimately wasn’t nominated. The five docs that earned nods were Black Box Diaries, No Other Land, Porcelain War, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and Sugarcane.
Ferrell and Steele first became friends while working on Saturday Night Live together in the 1990s. The Barbie actor was a castmember from 1995 to 2002 and Steele was the head writer from 1995 to 2008.
The Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy actor spoke to The Hollywood Reporter last year during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival about the origins of their road-trip doc.
“The conception of the whole discussion, for some reason in my head, was a documentary,” Ferrell said at the time. “Of course, I made it clear to Harper, ‘I don’t want to exploit our friendship, but this could, I think, be just a wonderful way for us to explore this topic. Obviously, for me to learn, ask all the questions that I have about what you’re going through and who you are, have you changed?’”
