Will Ferrell showed up at Jason and Travis Kelce’s live New Heights show in Los Angeles on Monday night and used the stage to spotlight his next golf project, The Hawk, while looking back at Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The appearance at the Orpheum Theatre turned a podcast taping into a sports-comedy crossover for fans in the room.
The timing gave the night extra weight. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby turns 20 this year, and Ferrell was there as the anniversary lands beside news of The Hawk, a 10-episode series in which he stars as Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, an aging golfer chasing a great comeback. Ferrell said the role gave him a chance to send up golf and the PGA in a way that had not really been done before, and he added that Netflix let the team make a very fun old-school comedy with horribly unredeemable characters.
Ferrell also tied the project to the route that brought him into entertainment in the first place. He said he loved playing sports as a kid in AYSO soccer, loved being on a team, and that feeling carried into film and Saturday Night Live. He said he once thought he would become a sportscaster before going into comedy, which is part of why he sees The Hawk as such a natural fit for him now.
The live show itself was built to keep surprises coming. Alex Morgan and Kelley O'Hara joined the night, along with Myles Garrett and Andrew Whitworth, and Donna Kelce got a big cheer as she walked through the crowd. There was also a spoof of the Pretty Woman poster renamed Pretty Man, and the show closed with a video of Taylor Swift feeding Travis Kelce “here comes the airplane” style.
That last detail landed more by its presence than its absence. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the subject of constant offstage speculation, but the night kept its focus on the live show and the guests on hand. Ferrell brought the room back to the joke-driven, team-sport energy that has long powered his work, including the kind of teasing he says he enjoys when he pulls up to Hollywood celeb tour buses and tells riders, “Hey, see anyone famous yet?”
What remains unanswered is the simplest question around The Hawk: when viewers will actually get to watch it. New Heights is set to begin its fifth season in September with the NFL season, but Ferrell left Los Angeles having promoted the series without a release date, leaving the project’s next step still to come.
