The family of Ronald Reagan has slammed Will Ferrell for signing on to star in and produce a comedy about the president’s agonizing battle with Alzheimer’s.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis says Ferrell is “cruel” for playing her father in the upcoming movie “Reagan.”
The film, which is being shopped to studios, shows the president in his second term as he begins suffering from dementia, and an intern is tasked with convincing the commander-in-chief that he is an actor playing the president.
Actress and author Davis told Page Six: “There’s nothing funny about Alzheimer’s. It is terrifying for the families of those who suffer from it. They live with the fear [of] what will change next, they have to live with this terror and grief every day. This movie is cruel, not just to my father, but to the millions of people who have the disease, and the millions more who care for them and watch them suffer every day.”
She added, “This is a heartless move by Will Ferrell. It is a script that has been around for a while, and I am sure with my mother’s passing, somebody thought this was a ‘great time’ to make this movie.
“After his diagnosis, my father would say, ‘I don’t know, I can’t remember, I have this disease,’ but what broke my heart was the look in his eyes, the sadness and the fear. It is unbelievable that someone could make somebody’s suffering into a comedy. If enough people say [that] this is not funny, perhaps we can stop it.”
Reagan died in 2004 at age 93.
Davis added in an open letter to Ferrell, whose reps didn’t comment, “Perhaps if you knew more, you would not find the subject humorous. Alzheimer’s … steals what is most precious to a human being — memories, connections, the familiar landmarks of a lifetime … I watched as fear invaded my father’s eyes — this man who was never afraid of anything. I heard his voice tremble as he stood in the living room and said, ‘I don’t know where I am.’”