Will Ferrell Heckling Jimmy Fallon's "Don't Stop Believin" Performance Is a Forever Classic
Ferrell was born to play an obnoxious audience member (with a blond bowl cut, no less) in the sketch with fellow SNL alum Fallon.
Performing onstage in front of a live audience is terrifying enough, but it's made even worse when there's a heckler in the crowd. A situation Jimmy Fallon's Peter the Singer character is all too familiar with.
A nervous singer who wears a piano key tie and brown suit, Peter's popped up in a series of sketches on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, performing well-known pop songs like "The River of Dreams" by Billy Joel and "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" for the Tonight Show audience.
As if Peter wasn't nervous enough, there always seems to be a heckler in the audience, yelling questions and ridiculous statements throughout his performance. The hecklers are often played by Saturday Night Live alum wearing a blond bowl cut wig and bright green turtleneck. During "The River of Dreams," Fallon is heckled by Tracy Morgan, and in "Escape," the rude audience member is played by Andy Samberg.
In a recently resurfaced Peter clip from January 2018, the nervous singer is bombarded with questions from a heckler—this time played by Will Ferrell. As Peter attempts to sing epic karaoke staple "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey, Ferrell's heckler shouts queries inevitably answered by the next lyric.
"Just a small town girl," Fallon starts out.
"Where does she live??" Ferrell's heckler demands.
"Living in a lonely world," answers Fallon with the following line. Ferrell's heckler proceeds to ask about the characters in the song taking the same midnight train. He eventually becomes fixated on the streetlights in the song, and for some reason brings up his brother Gabriel, who lives in Sacramento.
The audience soon learns that the experience was so traumatic for Peter that he quit music to "pursue a career in karate." Yet it evidently inspired Ferrell's heckler to open a "pretty bad" sports bar with his brother in Sacramento called Streetlights With Gabriel.
RELATED: Will Ferrell on SNL: His Greatest Moments
The former SNL actor is used to wearing costumes and playing outrageous characters when he swings by The Tonight Show. In addition to an annoying heckler, Ferrell's also appeared as a figure skater, a new and hipper Santa Claus, and even snack queen Little Debbie. The range!
Watch Ferrell heckle Fallon in the hilariously awkward video below.
