A new character emerges in the Adam McKay-Will Ferrell beef: Michael Shannon
McKay originally cast Boardwalk Empire star Michael Shannon as Jerry Buss before the actor dropped out
Aux News Adam McKay-Will Ferrell
Michael Shannon has entered the chat.
Fresh off his latest Oscars nomination, Adam McKay is still doing damage control over his split from collaborator, muse, and star of his funny movies, Will Ferrell. Thus far, the story has been that Ferrell wanted the role of late Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss in McKay’s upcoming HBO series Winning Time, which tracks the rise of the Lakers basketball dynasty. Instead, however, McKay gave the role to their mutual friend and artistic partner, John C. Reilly. But that’s not the whole story.
Per The Hollywood Reporter’s fascinating behind the scenes look at the series, Michael Shannon, the furrow-browed, square-jawed dramatic actor known for roles in Knives Out and Boardwalk Empire, was initially cast as Buss. Shannon and McKay go way back, getting their start on improv stages in Chicago. But, as McKay puts it, “Will was good with it.”
Things turned when production got underway, and McKay’s style, which requires a lot of turning directly to the camera and explaining the intricacies of a situation (yup, he’s doing that again, too) didn’t mesh with Shannon’s process. “It really bugged Michael that we were breaking the fourth wall,” says McKay, referring to the direct-to-camera format for which the filmmaker is now well-known. “He kept saying, ‘I don’t like this. It throws me. I’m having a hard time.’”
Because this is now a fixture of McKay’s style, Shannon left, and the director needed to find a new lead for the show, so instead of returning to Ferrell, who, again, really wanted the role, he hit up the actor’s best friend, John C. Reilly. “I told [Reilly], ‘We’re in a weird spot here, but I’m directing the pilot and I think you’d destroy this,” McKay remembers.
Meanwhile, Reilly was licking his wounds from Holmes & Watson, a box office fiasco he starred in with Ferrell and the rare recipient of an A.V. Club “F” letter grade. “I’d been sitting at my kitchen table, thinking, ‘Man, I’m dead in the water, all this work, 80 movies, and I got nothing going on,’ when I got the text from Adam,” he recalls.
At the time, McKay says that his friendship with Ferrell was in a “weird moment where Will and I weren’t exactly hugging each other.” But Reilly did what he thought necessary and reached out. “Will was very hurt that I wasn’t the one to call him,” McKay says. “I should have. I fucked up.”
For his part, Reilly was diplomatic regarding the situation. “Will is one of my best friends, Adam is one of my best friends,” he said. “I was delighted to get the job and that’s all I really have to say.”
Winning Time, which is already prepping its second season, premieres on HBO on March 6.
99 Comments
Reilly seems like the perfect person to play Buss. I’m so looking forward to this series. I do want to see if Adrian Brody can pull of Pat Reilly.
The idea of John C. Reilly worrying about his ability to get work is literally the worst thing I have read in the news in the last ten years. What if he’d had to go back to porn?
I would have watched it! Can’t beat Mike Honcho!
He also has that Vegas-style magic act to fall back on! 😉
Maybe he’ll get a job in a Star Wars movie. People say he looks like Han Solo.
I bet he can bench-press more than Harrison Ford, too!
But what does he bench?
He and Mark Wahlberg could have gone back to music if Stan Bush hadn’t stolen their song!
Now you’ve made me imagine Michael Shannon doing porn.It’s terrifying.
The Simpsons predict another one. Here’s Reilly begging the owners of Chalmskinn Productions for a shot at playing Grounds Keeper Willie.
Yes, that is exactly the same as this…
ChaaaalmSkiiin
exactly what I thought. I love the guy, he can do just about anything, and he thinks his career was dead after one shit movie? I have seen people spiral but come on, you’re Chest Rockwell, pull out of your nosedive and propose Step Brothers 2 to patch things up.
He could always go on tour as Dewey Cox, he said hopefully.
I think that Reilly is a realist, and knows that, unless you’re the kind of superstar whose name alone is enough to get a project made, you can’t depend on getting work. I recently saw a tweet by Diedrich Bader, another guy who has gotten a lot of work, who noted that it was the first time in about 12 years (IIRC) that he didn’t have another job to immediately go to. Reilly might eventually go back to the MCU–his character from the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Rhomann Dey, is the predecessor for the first comic book Nova–but in the meantime, he’s smart not to turn down work unless/until he gets enough to retire.
He’s been in over 65 movies. Granted, he’s not making Brad Pitt money, but he should certainly have enough to retire comfortably (even by Hollywood levels of comfortable). Also, I hope he never retires, he’s a favorite of mine.
The best actors are the most insecure.
Reilly needs to remember that before he started doing comedies with McKay and Ferrell, he was an accomplished dramatic actor. He had 15 years of movies (mostly supporting, but still) under his belt before Talladega Nights. And even after, the majority of his work was in dramas, action movies (Kong) etc. I especially love when he plans menacing, like Gangs of NY and The Sisters Brothers. His abilities have much longer legs than Farrell’s.ETA: And he’s perfect as Buss. Will Ferrell would have been Will Ferrell playing Jerry Buss.
Yeah, that checks out. I mean, John C. Reilly is an actor who can play all kinds of parts, and Will Ferrel is Will Ferrel. And I like Will Ferrel. But I’ve never seen him stop being Will Ferrel, even for a second.
This doesn’t seem like something to break up a long-time friendship. One friend screwed up and was inconsiderate to the other friend. Not out of malice but thoughtlessness. Ok, after an apology, move on.
It’s prolly a lot deeper than that.
Real men don’t say sorry. They slap dicks, punch each other in the face and share a smoke.
ohhhhhhh…so it’s not slap each other in the face, share dicks and slap smokes??? all this time, man
I think there was a longer report somewhere, maybe THR, that details how they’ve had drifted apart professionally for some time, due to taking on projects the others aren’t interested in even though they owned a production house together, and ended up splitting up the PH.
I thought it had something to do with McKay cheating on his wife with an intern at their shared company.
I mean, it seems like Ferrell has moved on, haha…and I kinda doubt McKay’s spending months airing their dirty laundry to reframe it as Ferrell being bitter about not getting the part has Ferrell saying “Man, I really wish Adam were still in my life!!!”
Not just a long time friendship but also dissolve a highly successful production company.Whay a weird story.
McCay seems very comfortable and willing to talk about this subject to hype his show.
Reminds me of how Pink Floyd fired Syd Barrett and then wrote a bunch of songs about how they felt bad about firing him.
Could we pick a better celebrity feud to milk? Ferrell wanted his friend to give him a part. He didn’t get it. Both remain highly wealthy and influential. Come back when it turns one of them slept with other’s wife or something.
Or Ferrell got that swearing baby landlord (who is now 16) drunk at The Sayers Club. That would be some hot goss.
No, no, you see, two middle-aged men with families and high pressure jobs had trouble staying best friends with each other, and they sometimes made career decisions without fully considering the other’s feelings. It’s fascinating.
Zzzz-zznk! Wh-whaaa? What’d you say? Sorry I fell asleep.
FOOTBALL PRACTICE!
I agree – we need full penetration here
At least let me know who the candy-ass is in this situation.
This is my favorite AV Club saga of all time and I am so delighted by this comment
I mean…that’s not what it’s about, haha?The issue isn’t that McKay went in another direction. It’s that he couldn’t be arsed to give his close friend and business partner of decades a damn phone call, so Ferrell found out from a third party.Highly doubt that McKay publicly airing this dirty laundry over the last few months is making Ferrell regret his decision, haha.
Fair, but it’s notable a bit because Will is famous for being a really sweet guy in real life. So hearing his split with his business and creative partner of many years over such a petty thing is kinda strange.
I feel comfortable coming out and saying that I too was cast as Jerry Buss. I only found out I was fired when I showed up to set and literally no one had ever heard of me and everyone yelled at me to leave or they would call security.
I was also cast as Jerry Buss. But, I was fired for yelling at Jason Siegel for the ending of How I Met Your Mother.
He’s still alive?
That’s on me, I was fired for screwing it up. Sorry.
I too was cast as Jerry Buss. I would have nailed it too cuz we’re both dead.
I am Jack’s raging bile duct. I am Jerry Buss. And I am Spartacus.
I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok.
McKay was just using you to bring down Reilly’s quote, dude was asking pre Watson & Holmes numbers and McKay was thinking scale.
I’m Jerry Buss and so is my wife.
Pshaw. I am actually doing the role and have shot the entire thing. Although, I hear rumors that my efforts have been assiduously scrubbed from all places where this could be checked…
I’m Jerry Buss, and I’m playing Will Farrell in the movie about the casting of “Winning Time.” But there’s a rumor I’m being replaced by Adam McKay.
Shannon and McKay go way back, getting their start on improv stages in Chicago.Even speaking as someone who has a deep love of improv, who has done dramatic work, I’m tilting my head trying to imagine Michael Shannon on the iO stage doing a fuckin’ Harold invocation…
And strangely I can hear that very specific Michael Shannon voice asking for an idea from the crowd.
“Can I have an ORDINARY household task? One that you’d PROBABLY want to PUT OFF?”*silence from crowd*“ANSWER ME!”
That totally made me laugh as I could *totally* envision that exact scenario due to Shannon’s intensity.
There’s a STORM COMING! And not one a-you on this bus bench is ready for it! (Mimes umbrella opening)
He’s a winning comic actor. He’s not cast in comic parts often but he shines in them. “I will not eat one iota of shit!”
Even in Boardwalk Empire he had lots of funny moments.
I immediately go to his dramatic reading of the sorority president email.
Michael Shannon’s reading is better than I remembered – it’s funny, but he also sells the joylessness. That email is one of my favorite representations of the Greek system, since it just comes out and says that this social organization isn’t about having a good time, it’s about competing in the pecking-order. Referring to the sorority sisters as “cock-blocks” and as “boners” in the same sentence is great, but I really love the understatement of the line (paraphrasing) “you can do what you want 361 days a year, but this week isn’t one of them,” which implies that a week could also be a day. It’s a perfect encapsulation of inept leadership: petty tyranny, detached from responsibility or basic common-sense, being conducted via email, without even a cursory effort at proofreading. Somebody clicked “send” without pausing to think “should I do this” or even, “what impact could sending this inflammatory written document to dozens of people have on me personally?” For what it’s worth, my other favorite representation of the Greek system was a couple years ago when multiple fraternities in North Carolina got shut down for trafficking opioids and cocaine. You know what they call it when a large group of Black people do that? A gang.
I used to wonder whether or not I should pledge a frat in college, since Animal House had suggested that at least some frats were fun and not uptight at all. Then, I stayed at a frat house during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year (most of their members took the summer off so they had plenty of rooms to let), and I was disabused of that notion; even though the remaining brothers were pretty chill, I realized that, even though it was kind of like an instant social life, there were a bunch of things that you absolutely had to do, above and beyond pledge hazing stuff. I would not be surprised if most if not nearly all frats and sororities had an official or unofficial “enforcer”, like the woman who wrote this email, whose job was to basically do this, and this woman’s only mistake was to write it down.
When this video came out, my former-sorority-girl cousin said she didn’t like the tone, but those were totally valid points if you know how Whateverthefuck Week is supposed to work. I suspect she had the same job but accomplished it through self-effacing passive-aggression.
I was in a fraternity (as was about half of my university) and my experience was pretty laid back. Sororities were a different story. I don’t know that anyone was harangued as mercilessly as the poor sisters of Delta Gamma (which we didn’t have) but they were much more concerned about overall image than the guys. Once you were in a fraternity, your involvement was as much or as little as you liked.
My general impression was always that frats and sororities were holding cells for people who weren’t ready to grow out of high school’s cliquishness yet.
It’s pretty funny when people talk about how frats are a convenient way to make friends, as if that weren’t true of literally every extracurricular activity on a college campus. It was true of my amateur theater group, it was true of the Bollywood dance group, it was true of the school newspaper, and it was true of the fucking Ultimate Frisbee League. Frats are like the expensive, boring version of something you could get for free.
I love the angry childishness. Very much a teenager misusing vulgarity.
Oh man I needed that.
Premium Rush. A great movie that he is great in. Gleefully evil, spitting rage and chewing tires.
He shines precisely because he isn’t over exposed in comedic roles. So when he comes in to something like Knives Out it works beautifully.
He’s very funny when allowed to be. He’s also pretty funny in moments where the humor is dubious. He has a line in Waco about training a dog to bring you a newspaper, and you don’t reward the dog by kicking it in the balls. I think it’s supposed to be dramatic but it’s funny as shit the way he says it.
I’ve seen him pop up in comedies, albeit still playing intense weirdos.
Whenever someone says something absolutely insane to me, but in a reasonable tone, I tell them “I want you to take what you just told me, and imagine Michael Shannon said it in any of his movies.”
How quickly everyone forgets our first collective exposure to Michael Shannon was actually in “Groundhog Day.”
Wrestlemania!!!
The phrase “Michael Shannon doing improv” instantly made me think of the Liam Neeson improv bit with Rickey Gervais.https://youtu.be/huJ81Mq2y34
That was great, what was it from?
Very short lived show that Gervais and Merchant created called Life’s Too Short. Think it was only on for a year.
Improv groups often have a person whose schtick is “wild-eyed lunacy,” but it’s much less common for that person to be talented and versatile as Michael Shannon.
The thing that gets me about his reason stated above for dropping out is that I’d love to see Shannon just look into the camera with that unnerving stare of his and break the fourth wall.
I rewatched the 1996 Keanu Reeves movie Chain Reaction and Michael Shannon plays a flower delivery guy that the police talk to at a road block. I was like ‘oh man I must have forgot that Michael Shannon plays an undercover assassin in this’ but nope he was just a flower delivery guy they used to show that the police put up a road block
All I can think is that episode of Life is Short where Liam Neeson tries to convince Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant he can do improv.EDIT: And I see now why I should read all replies first, because someone else made the same connection already.
Who’s music is that!“Sweet home Chicago starts playing”It’s Big Chicago himself Michael Shannon entering the ring and he’s got a chair!!!
Michael Shannon has more talent in his left tit than those other clowns have in their entire bodies
Both him and Riley are top 5 living actors imo
Rian Johnson has said that Shannon was the funniest guy on the set of ‘Knives Out’, and improvised a lot of his character’s bits.
He was definitely a highlight whenever he was on that After Midnight show that annoying Nerdist guy hosted. Dude has mad improv chops.
“Rian Johnson has said …”He has said a lot of things. None of which worth remembering.
Adam McKay really seems to have climbed all the way inside of his own asshole.
His movies certainly have.
Things turned when production got underway, and McKay’s style, which requires a lot of turning directly to the camera and explaining the intricacies of a situation (yup, he’s doing that again, too) didn’t mesh with Shannon’s process.This is the worst part of this article. I’m very interested in this story and to see John C. Reilly play Jerry Buss, but if McKay’s most annoying directorial habits are gonna be heavily featured in this, then ugh…
“Hey you know that unique thing that kinda worked and made The Big Short stand out?”“Yeah?”“He just does it all the time now.”“Oh, well. Fuck.”
My takeaway from this is that Adam McKay has decided all his works should just explain everything directly to the audience to cut out that pesky “interpretation.”
Have you met people? They absolutely need that. There are many films/pieces of art that fail their own ‘intention’, or just don’t have one – sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it doesn’t work, but sheesh. I really don’t know why the AV Club (and seemingly the commentariat) suddenly retroactively hates McKay and all of his work
No one’s saying they hate “all of his work.”…just all of his work since The Other Guys.
wait they filmed this pre-covid? what?holmes & watson came out way back in 2018. did they sit on the pilot for 3 years?
Don’t mess with Michael Shannon. He will cunt punt you.
This whole thing with John C Reilly taking lead position on something Will Ferrell wants reminds me so much of the plot of Talladega Nights.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m kind of done hearing about the casting of this damn movie. At least Russia invading Ukraine replaced it as the biggest news story.
Man I’m really confused. I’ve seen all of Mckays movies. Only really a fan of the early comedies though. So maybe that’s where I’m missing that he does fourth wall breaks enough for it to be his thing? I’m sure it’s done it his newer stuff that I usually slog through, but I did see them and don’t recall that type of thing at all.