It seems Will Ferrell can add predicting the future to his list of talents.
Molly Shannon made a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where she opened up about her decades-long friendship with the beloved actor.
She recalled working at a “cappuccino, scone place” in Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, when she was introduced to Ferrell through the Groundlings comedy troupe. “We clicked right away,” she said, noting that they met for the first time at the restaurant where she worked, and that she served him a scone and a latte. “We’ve been friends ever since. 30 years.”
They were later hired on Saturday Night Live in 1995, which not only launched them both into stardom but also became a defining era for the NBC sketch comedy series.
While reflecting on her early SNL days with host Jimmy Kimmel, the Divorce actress remembered one conversation she had with Ferrell that was surprisingly predictive of modern-day Hollywood.
“One night when we were at SNL, we had just started, and I was so excited like, ‘Oh my god, this job’s so great,’” Shannon explained. “And Will was kind of dark and he was like, ‘I don’t know. Who knows how long this is going to last?’”
“‘I just think it’s not going to last long, and I think actors are eventually going to be replaced by robots, and they’re not going to need human actors anymore,’” The Other Two actress recalled Ferrell telling her.
Shannon admitted she dismissed the idea at first, focusing on a more optimistic view of the future: “I was like, ‘What? Are you crazy? You’re being so dark.’”
However, she said they “die laughing about it now,” seeing just how on the nose the Barbie actor’s comments were with the rise of artificial intelligence and AI actors in the industry over the last few years.
At the time, though, Shannon said Ferrell quipped that he would be alright with whatever happens: “He said, ‘I could have a job working as a dog groomer or as a UPS driver or as a coach and still be happy.’”
In response, Kimmel joked that he had some “bad news” for Ferrell about the UPS driver job, as “that’s going to be a robot situation, too. He can probably groom dogs, but I feel like they’re going to figure out dog grooming robots before they figure any of the other stuff out.”
In addition to SNL, Shannon and Ferrell have appeared in numerous movies together, including Superstar (1999), A Night at the Roxbury (1998) and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), among others. They’re also both starring in the upcoming TV series, The Hawk, which Ferrell created.
