Christopher Walken informed Will Ferrell that their well-known “Extra Cowbell” Saturday Evening Reside sketch from 2000 ruined his life, the latter has revealed.
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The sketch paid tribute to Blue Öyster Cult’s 1976 basic ‘(Don’t Concern) The Reaper’, with Walken taking part in a producer, Bruce Dickerson, ordering Ferrell’s Gene Frenkle to play the cowbell with extra enthusiasm, to the chagrin of the remainder of the band.
Over 20 years on, Ferrell, who wrote the sketch, admitted in Peacock’s SNL 50: Past Saturday Evening documentary collection that Walken got here to resent it through the years – as he came upon when he visited the actor – who was showing in Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding In Spokane on Broadway – in 2010.
“I went to see [Walken] backstage, and he’s like, ‘You understand, you’ve ruined my life… each present, folks convey cowbells for the curtain name and bang them,” Ferrell stated. “It’s fairly disconcerting.’”
Walken didn’t participate within the instalment of the docuseries trying on the sketch, however has beforehand stated, through the New York Submit, “I don’t perceive why it follows me round prefer it does…. It’s sort of run its course.”
“I gotta have extra Cowbell.”
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (2000) #ChristopherWalken
— Michael Warburton (@TheMonologist) January 11, 2025
Jimmy Fallon, who performed one other of the band members, stated that the depth of the stay sketch was past something they’d tried in rehearsals, explaining, “[Walken] upped his sport. He was virtually doing an impersonation of Christopher Walken. He was speaking like how no human being would speak, ever.”
Ferrell stated that the sketch got here from ideas he’d had since ‘(Don’t Concern) The Reaper’ first got here out. He stated: “I had the thought whilst a child, ‘What’s the lifetime of the man taking part in the cowbell?’ I assume that was germinating for many years in my head.”
For his or her half, Blue Öyster Cult have been followers of the sketch when it aired. Lead guitarist Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, who wrote and sang lead vocals on the music, informed the Washington Submit in 2005: “We’re enormous Christopher Walken followers. I’ve in all probability seen it 20 occasions and I’m nonetheless not uninterested in it.”
As for Walken’s newer exercise, one in all his largest roles in the previous few years has been that of Burt Goodman within the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ thriller collection Severance. Lately, he revealed that he has Severance DVDs despatched to him as a result of he doesn’t “have the gear” to stream it.
The present’s second season premiered on January 17, virtually three years after the primary got here out. NME gave it a five-star evaluation, writing: “As issues get all of the extra intriguing by the minute, Severance is a present finest watched on excessive alert. For instance, graffiti scrawled within the background reads ‘Who’s alive?’
“By the point The Stone Roses’ ‘Love Spreads’ hits the soundtrack, with Ian Brown wailing ‘Let me put you within the image / Let me present you what I imply,’ you’ll be begging for the Severance staff to do the identical. Don’t stress it, although. Benefit from the journey and let this distinctive present tease and titillate your mind till you lastly submit.”