“I Was Going To Try To Be A Smart A**” – Dale Jr. Recalls Trying To Be Funny With Will Ferrell While Filming For ‘Talladega Nights’

But who else would’ve done the cameo other than Dale Earnhardt Jr.?

Of course, he made an appearance in the hilarious 2006 film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which starred Will Ferrell alongside other great actors in John C. Reilly, Sacha Baron Cohen, Leslie Bibb, Jane Lynch and Amy Adams.

It also included Dale Jr., who told the story of how it came to be recently during the Ask Jr. segment on YouTube, and you see him ask Ferrell (Ricky Bobby) for an autograph while preparing for a race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

It was a super short part, obviously, but Dale Jr. recalled a cool story about meeting Ferrell when he showed up to set:

“They asked me to be a part of it, of course I was like, absolutely, thanks for asking. Where do I go? When are we gonna do this? We did it at Charlotte Motor Speedway, it was not a race happening that weekend. I drove over to the racetrack, completely comfortable driving in there, been going there my whole life even when there’s not a race going on you know?

So I drive into the racetrack and over toward turn four, the old, old cup garage, and all of these campers and little rental campers and stuff are piled into this black top. And they were like, just go in there and park, sit around, somebody will grab you, get you going to hair, make up, whatever it is. There was a little table with about four chairs nobody sitting there. So I just sit down, start thumbing on my phone or something.

And I got my head down, and somebody sits down at the table, and when I look up it’s Will Ferrell. And he was like ‘Hey man, how’s it going? Thanks for coming today.’ And we sat there and just bullsh*tted for about 5, 10 minutes and then he’s like, ‘I’m gonna get going. I’m gonna get ready and do this, that, they want me over here.’ He was like, ‘They’ll come get you in a minute,’ and I was like, ‘Alright.'”

Pretty cool for Will to go find Jr. in the midst of the craziness and actually sit down and have a conversation with him. Clearly, it’s what stands out the most to Jr. from something that I imagine was a wild opportunity and experience in general.

They eventually brought Jr. over to where they were going to shoot the scene, which included around 30 extras though Jr. said it was quick and easy since he was obviously just saying a few scripted lines:

“So we got ready, they drove me over… they had about 20 or 30 extras and we were kind of gonna walk through the crowd and meet. And we had our lines that was scripted, he was a little bit of an ad-libber, and he could be free with whatever he wanted to say.

So we did probably three or four takes, and they’re like that’s good. It’s was very quick and that was that. I said, ‘Hey man, appreciate it, thanks,’ and I went on home.”

Sounds simple enough, right?

Well, later on, they wanted to film some non-scripted parts which you see at the end of the movie when the credits role, which Jr. says was way more nerve-wracking, obviously. It was during a race weekend at Talladega, and Jr. knew there was no way he was going to be funnier than a professional comedian, obviously:

“They didn’t have a script. Will’s gonna just start talking, and you just react.’ And that was really tough because, I mean, look, he’s a professional comedian… I didn’t wanna be a fool. I was going to try to be a smart a**. But I was never gonna be as good as him. So, it was just tough.”

I feel like that would be my worst nightmare, actually… so props to him for rolling with it and still delivering.

The scene that actually made it into the regular part of the film is great, and he did a really good job for someone who has really never acted that much for a major motion picture like this. And if you haven’t ever seen Talladega Nights before, you are seriously missing out… add that to your list of things to watch this weekend (put it at the top, I promise).

Here’s the movie scene with Jr… it’s kind of blurry, but you’ll get the point:

And here’s the clip from the Youtube video where he explains it all: