President Ronald Reagan’s family is firing back against Will Ferrell’s plans to portray the president during his battle with Alzheimer’s disease in a new comedy.
Michael Reagan, the president’s oldest son, said the disease “is not a comedy.”
{mosads}Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis penned a lengthy open letter to Ferrell, calling the former Saturday Night Live actor ignorant about the disease.
“Perhaps you have managed to retain some ignorance about Alzheimer’s and other versions of dementia,” Davis wrote on her website. “Perhaps if you knew more, you would not find the subject humorous.”
“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,’” she wrote. “For ten long years he drifted — past the memories that marked his life, past all that was familiar…and mercifully, finally past the fear. There was laughter in those years, but there was never humor.”
Ferrell’s movie reportedly tells the story of a White House intern who is tasked with making the president think he is an actor playing the role of the commander-in-chief.