While Ferrell had delivered plenty of supporting laughs in movies like “Zoolander” and “Old School,” when “Elf” was in production, he had yet to become the hilarious leading man that we know today, with “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” still on the horizon. Ferrell knew there was a lot riding on the success of this movie, especially when it came to the future of his career. On the podcast, he said:
“It was very strange to come off of ‘Saturday Night Live’ where I was known for doing edgy, not necessarily R-rated stuff but pushing the envelope. I just remember the first two weeks of shooting, we did all the New York exteriors up front. We kind of did the end of the movie first, and then we shot the rest of it in Vancouver. I’m in my little trailer in the middle of December, it’s cold, I’m literally in my elf outfit just staring at the mirror. I was just looking at myself in the mirror in the elf costume going, ‘Oh, boy, buddy, this better work. This could be your last movie.’ Then they’d be like, ‘What happened to that guy? What the heck happened? This movie about an elf and the North Pole?’ I literally had no idea. I was like, ‘This is either going to really work or this is just going to be disastrous.'”
Ferrell’s nerves probably weren’t eased by the feedback he was getting from Caan while shooting the film.
