‘Step Brothers’ turns 15: Mary Steenburgen on playing Will Ferrell’s mom

Actress Mary Steenburgen joins Yahoo Entertainment’s Kevin Polowy to share the “total joy” of collaborating with Will Ferrell. Steenburgen tells Yahoo Entertainment that after a small role in Ferrell’s 2003 Christmas comedy, “Elf,” in which she played Ferell’s stepmother, she received a call from the actor asking if she’d be offended if he offered her the role of his biological mother in a new film called “Step Brothers.” Despite being only 11 years younger than Ferrell, Steenburgen says she told him, “No, I’d be offended if you asked someone else.”

Video Transcript

KEVIN POLOWY: What do you enjoy so much about being Will Ferrell's mom?

MARY STEENBURGEN: I was his step mom, [INAUDIBLE]. And he and I just giggled together and laughed together and had so much fun. And he called me and said, would you be offended if I asked you to actually play my mom? And of course, I'm 11 years older than him.

And I said-- but I said, no, I would be offended if you asked someone else. And thank God I did "Step Brothers" because "Step Brothers" was one of the apex moments of my life. It was just one of those things that you can't believe how lucky you are. And Richard Jenkins, who I love, we looked at each other on the first day and went, we're working with these two comedic geniuses who literally can't say anything that isn't going to break me, a terrible giggler, up.

- Hey, Nancy. Can you make me a grilled cheese sandwich.

- Sure.

- No.

- What?

- Dale just ate. He's testing you to see how much you can get away with.

MARY STEENBURGEN: And we were like what, are we doing here? And then I said, you know what? We've got to make people believe that these two idiots still live at home with their parents, and we're just the dysfunctional parents that would still have middle aged people, you know, at home like this.

- Can we turn our beds in the bunk beds?

- Yes.

- Why are you guys so sweaty?

MARY STEENBURGEN: Honestly, it was just a total joy. It was people used to come-- you know, because people come to film sets, and they think they're going to love it. And then they watch it for five minutes, and they get bored, and they leave.

But on this film, people would come, bring their, like, lawn chairs, go sit by Adam McKay, who we had to keep so far away from us because he was laughing so loudly. And for some bizarre-- he was so far from us that he had to have a megaphone. And there was, every day, more and more people.

It was like doing theater, you know? And it was just-- my job was to think of the saddest things I could think of all day long to keep from dying laughing at these idiots that were doing this stuff. It was just beyond hysterical.

And it was-- half of that film was improvised so that you never knew what was coming at you. You couldn't, like, prepare in the morning, you know? It was so amazing.