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Will Ferrell shared that Italians mistakenly called him “The Zoolander” despite his role as Mugatu in the 2001 film
Ferrell noted that Italians have a particular love for the 2001 satirical fashion comedy
In a new podcast, he also revealed that French audiences especially love his 2004 film, Anchorman
Will Ferrell says he was once mistaken for “The Zoolander” during a trip to Italy.
Speaking on a recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ferrell, 59, told host Josh Horowitz: “The couple times I’ve been to Italy, there has been — I remember, in a cafe once and this woman was like, ‘There he is, the Zoolander.’”
“I’m like, ‘Oh, well, no, I’m not the Zoolander. I’m Mugatu,’ [and she was like] ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ That movie in particular … the Italians love it,” Ferrell added.
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Will Ferrell in ‘Zoolander’Credit: Paramount Pictures/courtesy Everett Collection
Ferrell did appear in the 2001 movie, a satirical take on the fashion industry, but not as the eponymous main character, male model character Derek Zoolander (played by Ben Stiller, who also directed the film).
Ferrell instead starred as the villainous mogul Jacobim Mugatu, who attempts to brainwash Derek into assassinating the prime minister of Malaysia. At the film unfolds, Derek unites with his male model rival, Hansel McDonald (Owen Wilson), and falls in love with a journalist named Matilda Jeffries (played by Stiller’s real-life wife, Christine Taylor).
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Elsewhere in the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Ferrell said that another of his films — 2004’s Anchorman — is “put on a pedestal” by the French.
“The foreign lens on some of this stuff is always interesting [in terms of] what they gravitate toward,” Ferrell said.
In 2016, Ferrell and the other principal cast members of Zoolander starred in a sequel — Zoolander 2 — which was both a commercial and critical failure.
Stiller, 60, spoke about the sequel on David Duchovny’s podcast, Fail Better, saying, “I thought everybody wanted this. And then it’s like, ‘Wow, I must have really f—ed this up. Everybody didn’t go to it. And it’s gotten these horrible reviews.”
He continued: “It really freaked me out because I was like, ‘I didn’t know was that bad?’’ What scared me the most on that one was l’m losing what I think what’s funny, the questioning yourself … on Zoolander 2, it was definitely blindsiding to me. And it definitely affected me for a long time.”
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