Dale Earnhardt Jr. reflects on cameo in Talledega Nights, time with Will Ferrell

In 2006 the world was introduced to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Of course, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had a cameo. Everyone who saw the NASCAR film remembers the funny exchange between Earnhardt and Will Ferrell’s character, Ricky Bobby.

Over the years, Talladega Nights has taken on a life of its own. There are drivers that embrace it, Ryan Preece and Chase Briscoe in particular, and then there are those who don’t appreciate it much.

Appearing in the movie, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has a small interaction with the titular character. Dale Jr. sneaks through a crowd of fans and secretly gets an autograph from Ricky.

On a recent episode of the Dale Jr. Download, Earnhardt talked about meeting Ferrell.

“So, I thought we, I feel like I told this story really recently,” Earnhardt explained. “So, we filmed, they asked me to be a part of it. Of course, I was like, ‘Absolutely, thanks for asking, where do I go, when are we going to do this?’ We did it at Charlotte Motor Speedway. There was not a race happening that weekend, and we went, I drove over to the race track … So, I drive into the race track and over in Turn 4, the old, old Cup garage and all of these campers and little rental campers and stuff are piled into this little blacktop.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. reveals movie magic behind ‘Talladega Nights’

Once Dale Earnhardt Jr. made it to the track, he didn’t have much to do. After waiting around for a while, he was surprised by who sat next to him.

“There was a little table with about four chairs, nobody sitting there,” Earnhardt continued. “I just sit down, start thumbing on my phone or something. I’ve got my head down and somebody sits down at the table and I look up and it’s Will Ferrell. And he was like, ‘Hey man, how’s it going? Thanks for coming today.’ And we sat there and just bullshitted for about five, ten minutes.”

During filming, there weren’t that many people involved in Earnhardt’s scene. However, in the film, it looks like a huge crowd of people. When it was all said and done, it wasn’t all that complicated of a scene to capture.

“So, they had about 20 or 30 extras and we were kinda gonna walk through the crowd and meet. And we had our lines that were scripted. He was a little bit of an ad-libber and he could be free with whatever he wanted to say. So, we took, we probably did three or four takes and they were like, that’s good! It was very quick and that was that. I said, ‘Hey man, appreciate it, thanks.’ He said, ‘Thanks,’ and I went on home.”