Will Ferrell apparently couldn’t help himself from playing a humbling prank on Sean “Diddy” Combs.
The beloved funnyman was purportedly so annoyed that Combs demanded a closed set on “Saturday Night Live” to rehearse for his 1998 performance of “Come With Me” that he not only crashed it, but did so in character — as a former “SNL” crew member named Ron.
His former colleague Ana Gasteyer, whose tenure from 1996 to 2002 overlapped with Ferrell’s, recalled Wednesday on the “Las Culturistas” podcast co-hosted by current “SNL” star Bowen Yang that Combs had “shut down the whole building.”
“You can tell like the five assholes in the six years that I was there when they would be like, ‘So and so is in the building, everybody stay in your dressing rooms!’” she added. “Which is applicable if you’re a presidential candidate. But apart from that, really, it’s my house.”
Ferrell, who was dressed as Ron that day as part of an ongoing bit to amuse his colleagues, was naturally more than willing to go big and, as Gasteyer explained on the podcast, jumped at the chance when “they were like, ’Wouldn’t it be so funny if Ron just went in?’”
“He went on down the stairs and he marched right in,” she added. “And I have the video from the control room where Sean Combs is rapping with like, ‘Da-na-na, da-na-na, da-na-na, da-na-na’ behind him. And [Ferrell’s] walking around, looking really disoriented.”
While the staggering number of sexual assault claims against Combs was years away from being brought to light, Gasteyer admitted Wednesday that the prank couldn’t have targeted a more “deserving” person — and teasingly added that Combs “really did not roll with it.”
Left: Evan Agostini/Invision/Associated Press; Right: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/Associated Press
“It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened,” she said on the podcast.
“He was very uncomfortable, but it was also just like, the artifice of all that faux importance,” Gasteyer added. “Like what’s gonna happen? You’re gonna walk into the studio and you’re gonna be like, ‘I’m in the studio. I work here.’?”
Combs was arrested in September on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, nearly one year after ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura accused him of rape and abuse. While she settled her suit within 24 hours, it prompted more than 100 women to come forward.
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“I gotta find this tape,” Gasteyer said on the podcast Wednesday, “’cause I have it.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.