EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: Blaze of Glory

Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams are Fire Saga, representing Iceland at EUROVISION in the aptly titled Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga. TF speaks to the on-song stars and director David Dobkin to find out why this gloriously camp comedy is exactly what we need right now…

- JAMIE GRAHAM

Well, it’s kind of a funny story,” says Will Ferrell, explaining how he first happened upon the Eurovision Song Contest. “My wife has family in Sweden. Our first trip there would have been the spring of ’99, and we were out in the countryside at their little summer cabin, and her cousin said [Swedish accent], ‘So, shall we sit down and watch Eurovision?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I guess. What’s that?’ I watched mesmerised for the entire three hours. Ironically, that year a Swede won: Charlotte Nilsson. I was just blown away by the spectacle, the camp. Everything you guys are used to, we didn’t have anything like that, in America. I literally went, ‘That would make a great movie.’”

Fast-forward 16 years and Ferrell had done exactly zilch about making that great movie happen. Partly it was because not many people in America know of the Eurovision Song Contest. Partly it’s because Ferrell’s been an extraordinarily busy bee, with Zoolander, Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy and Wedding Crashers turning him into a major star in the early noughties, and nary a pause for breath since. And partly it’s because he was convinced that someone else would make a Eurovision movie first. How could they not?

“Then, around four of five years ago, I was like, ‘God, no one’s making a Eurovision movie,’” chuckles Ferrell. “So we started the process.”