He sits on a throne of lies.
Will Ferrell was in full “Elf” regalia while attending a recent NHL game.
On Sunday, Dec. 29, the former “Saturday Night Live” star, 57, wore the outfit from his famous 2003 movie “Elf” to Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena. He was spotted in the stands watching a game between the LA Kings and the Philadelphia Flyers.
Ferrell has yet to reveal why he was dressed as his character, Buddy.
His character Buddy had a childish cheerful attitude, and preferred eating spaghetti doused in maple syrup to smoking and drinking. But, for unknown reasons, while attending the hockey game with his family, Ferrell broke character to smoke, drink and look grumpy while dressed as the elf.
The “Step Brothers” star was at the game with his wife, Viveca, and their son, Axel, 14. The couple have been married since 2000 and also have sons Magnus, 20, and Mattias, 18.
The holiday classic follows Buddy, a human who was raised among elves on the North Pole and feels like a misfit, as he was too tall and large for chairs and showers in Santa’s workshop.
When he learns that he’s got a human dad, Walter (James Caan), he goes to New York City to meet him.
Buddy isn’t used to the human world, and hijinks ensue. Zooey Deschanel co-stars as Buddy’s love interest, and “Game of Thrones” star Peter Dinklage has a small pre-fame role as a children’s book author who gets into a fight with Buddy.
Mary Steenburgen, who played Walter’s wife, Emily, in the movie, told People magazine last year for the movie’s 20th anniversary that she reacted to Ferrell’s costume for the first time on screen.
“I had not seen even a design or anything about what Will was going to look like,” she said. “And then he comes in … And I’m tall, but he towers over me, and he comes in in this elf outfit, and then I’m having to eat the spaghetti with maple syrup.”
She added: “I just spent the whole day trying to get my lines out without laughing.”
The Oscar-winning actress revealed that she and Caan would sometimes ruin takes by laughing at Buddy’s look.
“You didn’t really get used to it,” she told the outlet. “I think we’re all used to it more now than any of us were then, because we’d never seen it on posters or on sides of buses or any of that. And so we did tend to just enjoy it so much.”
In 2021, Ferrell revealed he turned down a $29 million offer to star in a sequel.
“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,’” the “Anchorman” star told the Hollywood Reporter. “And I thought, ‘Can I actually say those words? I don’t think I can, so I guess I can’t do the movie.’”
Ferrell also once told the Guardian in 2006, “I remember asking myself: could I withstand the criticism when it’s bad and they say, ‘He did the sequel for the money?’ I decided I wouldn’t be able to. I didn’t want to wander into an area that could erase all the good work I’ve done — but you watch, I’ll do some sequel in the future that’s crap.”
Before his death in 2022 at age 82, Caan dished about plans for a sequel.
“We were gonna do it and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I finally got a franchise movie, I could make some money, let my kids do what the hell they want to do,’” Caan told the radio station 92.3 Cleveland in 2020.
“And the director [‘The Mandalorian’ creator Jon Favreau] and Will didn’t get along very well. So, Will wanted to do it, he didn’t want the director, and he had it in his contract, it was one of those things.”
