Will Ferrell Ridicule Reagan?

Written by | Entertainment

According to Variety magazine, comic actor Will Ferrell has agreed to play President Ronald Reagan in a film that depicts the former chief executive as befuddled and demented. Reagan’s daughter Patti isn’t laughing.

Ferrell to Play Reagan

Ferrell is set to play the Gipper in an upcoming comedy called Reagan. Its plot revolves around an intern tasked with convincing the 40th president that he’s an actor playing president in a movie.

Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, is mortified. “Perhaps you have managed to retain some ignorance about alzheimer’s and other versions of dementia,” Davis writes in an open letter published online by The Daily Beast. “Perhaps if you knew more, you would not find the subject humorous.”

“For ten long years he drifted—past the memories that marked his life, past all that was familiar…and mercifully, finally past the fear. There was laughter in those years, but there was never humor.”

Davis is understandably protective of her father’s legacy, but the late president was not publicly diagnosed until years after he left office, although there were rumors that his sharpness had faded while he was still in the White House.

Last modified: May 6, 2019