Comedian Will Ferrell To Speak On Class Day

After three months of secret deliberations, the Senior Class Marshals yesterday announced that comedian Will Ferrell will address them on Class Day.

“That’s ridiculous,” said W. Cory Walker ’03, who said he had suggested Ferrell to the committee. “He’s the funniest Saturday Night Live guy ever. I’m stoked.”

Ferrell, who was a regular cast member on NBC’s Saturday Night Live from 1995 through 2002, rose to fame with his roles as President Bush and Craig the Spartan cheerleader as well as several popular comedies such as A Night at the Roxbury and Austin Powers.

He will now follow a long line of comedians who have been Class Day speakers, including Rodney Dangerfield in 1978, Conan O’Brien ’85 in 2001, and Al Franken ’73 last year, among others.

Continuing what appears to be a Senior Class Commitee tradition, Ferrell’s appearance was landed through a labyrinthine process that circumvented the actor’s publicist until Monday afternoon.

According to First Class Marshal Krishnan N. Subrahmanian ’03, contact with Ferrell was established via a friend of the committee, B. Aidan Flanagan ’03, who knew a Ferrell acquaintance.

“I don’t know who these people are,” Subrahmanian said. “We just got the connection.”

“Last year the connection was more direct,” Subrahmanian said, referring to Franken, who was secured through his daughter, currently a senior at Harvard. “This year, it was a little more extended.”

Ferrell’s Los Angeles publicist Matt Lebou said he did not have Subrahmanian’s contact information until he got it from a reporter Monday evening.

Up until that point, Lebou said he had heard of the June 4 event only in a brief conversation with his client.

Second Class Marshal L. Patrick Noonan ’03 said he was thrilled the Class of 2003 had landed Ferrell as a speaker.

“The man is a comedic genius," Noonan said. “He has been in a lot of classic movies, and should really uplift the senior class. He’s so hot right now.”

This year, marshals said they worked hard to maintain the secrecy of their decision process, after it was revealed last year that Franken was not on the committee’s original list of speaker choices.

Marshals said that the revelation was offensive to Franken and the information should not have been made public in the first place.

In his speech last year, Franken jokingly referred to a Crimson article listing the senior class’s first choices for speaker.

“Now I know I wasn’t the first choice to speak here this afternoon,” Franken said. “I know this because the Crimson article announcing I’d be the class day speaker made a point of underscoring that fact many times.”

Franken read a list of seven speaker candidates named in the article as choices the senior class committee pursued before asking him.

“So, yes, I was available,” Franken said. “Actually, I had to reschedule an audition for a voiceover for a hemorrhoid commercial, but it’s not really worth getting into.”

But yesterday, members of the selection committee said that Ferrell was far from a last resort.

“This time, [Ferrell] was definitely a top choice from the start,” Noonan said.

Subrahmanian said that Ferrell’s presence at Class Day was clinched in a 4 p.m. phone call between himself, Lebou, and the Harvard Alumni Association’s Director of College Alumni Programs Hoopes Wampler.

The selection process of Class Day speakers begins with the solicitation of suggestions from the graduating senior class.

The speakers committee deliberates and then searches the class for connections to candidates. Finally, the committee sends out invitations to top choices.

Ferrell, 34, was born in Irvine, Calif. and graduated from University of Southern California (USC), before working as a sportscaster on a weekly cable show.

Eventually, he joined The Groundlings, a Los Angeles improv comedy group. He starred in the movie Old School, which since opening on Feb. 21 had made $74 million in the U.S.

“[Ferrell] is one of the funniest people in the world, and we’re just really happy to have him,” Subrahmanian said.

—Staff writer Justin D. Gest can be reached at gest@fas.harvard.edu.