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Will Ferrell goes serious

Will Ferrell is being awfully modest about his dramatic abilities.

“Look at someone like Rebecca Hall,” says the reigning king of movie comedies about his Everything Must Go co-star.

“She can eat a tuna sandwich and cry. She has this incredible skill to tap into emotion. I don’t have that. [But] it was fun to be able to get there really quickly and surprise myself.”

We’re talking about a powerful scene near the end of the movie, where his character Nick – an alcoholic who’s lost his job, his wife, his car and his home – says goodbye to the person who might be his closest friend, a lonely, slightly overweight African-American teen named Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace, a.k.a. CJ).

“In a weird way, I used the context of that actual day on set,” says Ferrell, looking relaxed and every bit as likeable as he appears on the big screen.

“I think it was CJ’s last day of filming, and he was so sincere and sweet in his performance that it just choked all of us up in a way that it was easy to get to that moment.”

The movie, helmed by first-time feature director Dan Rush, is being called a drama with comedic moments.

“I knew as soon as I read the script that it was a drama,” says Ferrell. “That was a discussion Dan and I had.”

Maybe he wanted to be on the same page because of his experience with 2006’s Stranger Than Fiction, which also played TIFF.

“I kept talking about [Stranger Than Fiction] as a drama that was funny,” he says, “and all the marketing people were like, ‘Stop! Stop! It’s a comedy!’ No, it was a drama. So I said [to Dan], if we’re going to do [Everything Must Go], let’s be clear about what it is.”

At the same time, he says, he wants to avoid labels.

“I just think it’s a great story – one that’s true to life. Life has moments that are funny, moments that are sad, and moments that are ambiguous. It’s not a nice, neat tidy package.”

Everything Must Go screens again Monday (September 13), 4:30 pm, at the Winter Garden. Read a review of the film here.

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