New Details Emerge on Adam McKay’s ‘Winning Time’ Casting Decision That Led to Will Ferrell Fallout

It was revealed back in December that Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s nearly three-decade-long working partnership and friendship had quite possibly ended over casting disputes surrounding McKay’ HBO series Winning Time about the creation of the Showtime Lakers.

In a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter, McKay pinpointed the casting choice that created the rift and shifted their relationship, which was when he hired Michael Shannon to play Lakers majority owner and Showtime architect Jerry Buss. The Don’t Look Up director had known Shannon for 25 years, nearly as long as he’d been working with Ferrell, and Adam even said Will was “good with it” at first, until the casting soured.

McKay said Shannon wasn’t comfortable with all the “fourth wall–breaking” he was required to do. “He kept saying, ‘I don’t like this. It throws me. I’m having a hard time,’” McKay recalled.

Shannon backed out of the role at the last minute, before they could shoot the pilot episode, making McKay tap Step Brothers co-lead John C. Reilly. This is what apparently upset Ferrell the most, especially since he had voiced wanting to play Dr. Buss. 

“It was at this weird moment where Will and I weren’t exactly hugging each other, even though there was nothing that terrible, and [Reilly] called Will and said, ‘Hey, McKay just came to me with this.’ And Will was very hurt that I wasn’t the one to call him, and I should have. I fucked up.”

In the same interview, Reilly described that he felt “dead in the water” and like he had nothing going on prior to getting the call from McKay. “Will is one of my best friends, Adam is one of my best friends, I was delighted to get the job and that’s all I really have to say,” Reilly said.

McKay and Ferrell’s partnership stretched back to SNL and spanned 25 years, working together under their Gary Sanchez Productions banner and creating classic comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers. The company was disbanded in 2019.

In a previous interview with THR, McKay reflected about his lost friendship with Ferrell as well.

“I love Ferrell. Always will,” he said. “I had the best, most fun run of my life with him. Yes, I wish I had talked to him about it out of respect, but we were both focused on our new companies and life just took over.”

He said the same thing about regretting letting a casting decision ruin their relationship in an interview with Vanity Fair in November.

“I fucked up on how I handled that,” McKay explained. “It’s the old thing of keep your side of the street clean. I should have just done everything by the book.”

Winning Time is set to premiere on HBO on March 6.