Here’s What Burt Reynolds Thought of Norm Macdonald’s Turd Ferguson Impression

Norm Macdonald’s most popular impression on Saturday Night Live was Burt Reynolds, the ‘70s action-comedy star who… Wait, what’s this? Mr. Reynolds has entered a new name on the podium. He’d now like to be referred to as “Turd Ferguson.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Turd Ferguson. It’s a funny name.”

By his own admission, Macdonald wasn’t much of a sketch comedian, preferring to stay behind the Weekend Update desk and deliver one-liners. But he made an exception when it came to Reynolds. “I knew that if I did an impression of him it would get a laugh because he has such great comic timing and delivery,” Macdonald told Paste Magazine in 2018 after Reynolds’ passing. “So it was really stealing his persona to get laughs, you know. But I could never figure out a way. This guy that I wrote with, Steve Higgins … me and Higgins came up with putting him on Celebrity Jeopardy!, because then we could do any celebrities.”

Reynolds may have had a fun-loving onscreen persona, but he wasn’t always easy to get along with when the cameras weren’t rolling. On the set of Boogie Nights alone, he nearly came to blows with both Paul Thomas Anderson and Thomas Jane. So did he really like what Macdonald was doing on Saturday nights, where he spoofed Reynolds eight times?

“I really did,” Burt told Downtown magazine, as reported by MeTV. “If anybody can take the time and trouble and put in the effort to do something like that, you have to look at the fun side of it. I loved it. We even worked together on the TV show, he played my son on My Name Is Earl.”

That was a thrill for Macdonald, who counts Reynolds as a childhood hero. “When I grew up as a little boy, he would be on Carson,” the comedian told Paste. “Later when I knew him I told him he was so funny on Johnny Carson, and he said that actually hurt his career, because a movie star is supposed to have a mystique, you know, and be unknowable, or whatever. And he was the first guy to just go out and be self-deprecating and funny in that way.”

When Macdonald pitched the character for Celebrity Jeopardy!, the SNL costume department picked out an outfit and gray beard reminiscent of Reynold’s then-current Boogie Nights persona. Macdonald fought to play the Smokey and the Bandit-era Reynolds, he told Howard Stern. “It’s funny to me,” Macdonald said. “No one ever mentioned that one guy on Celebrity Jeopardy! is from 40 years ago.” 

Stern also worried that Reynolds would have been insulted by the impression, but Macdonald confirms that he was a fan. “He was always real nice to me.”

“He was a guy I loved,” Macdonald told Paste. “In a way it was a lot like Chevy (Chase) or Dean Martin. He was just a guy having fun, you know?”