'Step Brothers' director Adam McKay says lead characters would have been QAnon believers

Columbia Pictures

'Step Brothers' director Adam McKay believes lead characters would have been QAnon believers

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 4/13/21

When Step Brothers hit theaters in July 2008, Donald Trump's claim to fame was wealth and The Apprentice.

Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) couldn't have known that Trump would become President of the United States in 2016 then lead an administration that, among many other things, sparked QAnon. However, director Adam McKay is fairly certain they would have loved those developments.

The New York Times' David Marchese interviewed McKay and, at one point, asked whether Step Brothers's main characters would be QAnon fans.

"No question about it," McKay said. "They'd be way into it, and they'd be torturing [Richard] Jenkins and [Mary] Steenburgen's characters with it, and they would eventually be having meetings at the house and somehow QAnon would drift into Jenkins's workplace. They also would have loved Trump. I don't speak for Ferrell or Reilly, but I think you could safely assume they would agree with that."

Step Brothers followed Brennan and Dale after their parents, Nancy Huff (Steenburgen) and Dr. Robert Doback (Jenkins), get married. The 40-something unemployed men have to navigate step-sibling waters usually reserved for adolescents.

McKay and Ferrell also teamed up for Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), The Other Guys (2010) and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013).

"I don’t think there’s any doubt that the comedies of the late ’90s and the 2000s were of a moment. It’s no mistake that a lot of those—and especially the ones that Will and I did— were about mediocre oafish white men who are entitled: news anchors who were giving us puff, racecar drivers who acted as if they were king of the world before getting their butts kicked, giant man-children consumers. It all can be summed up by George W. Bush. But comedy needs to have real teeth to work now. Comedy about relationships, careerism, your own self-image — it just doesn’t work. Comedy is in a weird spot. There’s no question about it."

Step Brothers additionally starred Adam Scott, Kathryn Hahn and Andrea Savage.

Read McKay's full NYT interview here.

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