Gov. Charlie Baker Isn’t Happy About Will Ferrell’s Ronald Reagan Movie

Photos via AP

Update: Friday, 3:00 p.m.

Will Ferrell has backed out of the project. A rep for Ferrell told the Daily News: “The REAGAN script is one of a number of scripts that had been submitted to Will Ferrell which he had considered. While it is by no means an ‘Alzheimer’s comedy,’ as has been suggested, Mr. Ferrell is not pursuing this project.”

“It’s just not funny. There’s nothing funny about it,” an emotional Baker told reporters Friday afternoon.

Emotional @MassGovernor talking about his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, and Will Farrell now non movie. pic.twitter.com/em3kOBHPB4

— AndreaWBZ (@AndreaWBZ) April 29, 2016

Previously:

Count Gov. Charlie Baker among those who aren’t exactly eager for Will Ferrell’s latest film.

Baker took to Twitter early Friday morning to voice his disappointment with Ferrell’s new project, Reagan, in which the comedian plays President Ronald Reagan during his second term, as he struggles with Alzheimer’s disease.

This is dismaying. Anyone who has family w/Alzheimer's can tell you there is courage, but no humor here. None. https://t.co/hzft0uzZVY

— Charlie Baker (@CharlieBakerMA) April 29, 2016

In Reagan, an intern convinces the ailing president that he’s an actor merely playing the president in a movie. The film’s script was voted to the 2015 Black List of Hollywood’s best unproduced screenplays, while Ferrell has previously portrayed President George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live.

Baker’s opposition to the film isn’t the garden-variety pearl-clutching you’d expect from Republicans whenever Reagan might be portrayed in an unflattering light. The governor’s mother has battled Alzheimer’s disease for the last 10 years, and was unable to attend her son’s inauguration because of it.

“There’s a ton of history in her family on this one,” Baker said at Mass. General in October. “I mean, I’m virtually certain that at some point it’s going to be an issue for me. I look like her, I sound like her, I am so cut from her side of the family, and this affected literally everybody on her side of the family.”

Baker added that the disease is something that she and his 87-year-old father have faced “with an enormous amount of grace.”