Will Ferrell Makes Dirty 'Elf' Jokes and Rocks His Daisy Dukes in 'Scared Straight' Prison Skit at 'SNL' 50th Anniversary
Will Ferrell's physical comedy still gets all the laughs on Saturday Night Live.
Ferrell joined an already star-studded cast of characters in the 'Scared Straight' sketch on SNL50: The Anniversary Special. The sketch begins with Jason Sudeikis as a cop, addressing Marcello Hernández, Mikey Day and Michael Longfellow, three teens busted for shoplifting.
Sudeikis brings in two prisoners to help the teens understand the magnitude of what they've done: Kenan Thompson and Eddie Murphy.
Thompson and Murphy inundate the three with stories from prison, but the teens quickly realize the stories are lifted from Harry Potter and The Nutty Professor.
Murphy's nod to his comedy hit isn't the only self-referential moment in the sketch, however. The pair are quickly joined by Ferrell's Daisy Duke-wearing character, complete with mullet.
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scared straight is working#SNL50 pic.twitter.com/1E8jTTXdnp
— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) February 17, 2025
Related: Will Ferrell Reveals He Turned Down 'Elf' Sequel Despite $29 Million Payday
Ferrell's Big Red joins the men in telling prison stories, arguing that it's actually "really fun."
"I'm in an improv group. I'm scrapbooking like crazy. Outside, I never used to get laid. Now I'm having sex 50, 60 times a day," he says.
Sharing his own story, Big Red adds, "I was abandoned as a baby by my human parents, so I was forced to grow up at the North Pole ... You know what, I'm gonna skip ahead. It's Elf. I'm talking about Elf."
The jokes about his family-friendly holiday film quickly take a NSFW turn. Even Ferrell himself fumbled over the racy lines, which elicited so much laughter that both Thompson and Murphy struggled to hold back their smiles.
When Hernández pushes back, the men crowd around him as Big Red says, "In prison, you're not going to be an elf named Buddy. You're gonna get Elf'd, right in your butt-y."
"And forget about your North Pole, what you're going to have to worry about is your South Pole," Murphy's character adds.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, Ferrell discussed his decision not to do a sequel to his holiday smash hit film.
Elf was a box office hit grossing $223 million worldwide and becoming an instant Christmas classic. According to THR, he would have been paid $29 million for taking part in the sequel. Ferrell said he turned down the sequel due to it having too similar a premise to the original movie.
"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,' " Ferrell told THR. "And I thought, 'Can I actually say those words? I don't think I can, so I guess I can't do the movie.' "
SNL50: The Anniversary Special airs Sunday, Feb. 16, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.
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