Will Ferrell Weighs In on How His ‘The Hawk’ Character Would Do Against Fellow Golfer Happy Gilmore

Move over Happy Gilmore, there’s another rogue golfer in town.

In new Netflix series The Hawk, Will Ferrell is starring as Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins, a washed-up golf legend who is trying to make the sport’s greatest comeback by chasing one final major. And in typical Ferrell fashion, that’s accompanied by plenty of chaos along the way, much like his friend Adam Sandler‘s Happy Gilmore character.

At the show’s Los Angeles premiere on Thursday, Ferrell weighed in on how The Hawk and Happy would stack up against each other on the course, telling The Hollywood Reporter “they come from two different approaches. I think Lonnie’s a fan of Happy, they’d have a great time, but Lonnie would get inside of his head.”

His co-stars also gave their thoughts on the hypothetical showdown, with Jimmy Tatro musing, “I think they would get on each other’s nerves. I think Happy would be irked by The Hawk; it’s hard not to get annoyed by The Hawk if he’s beating you, but just the antics, it’s the kind of thing that would drive you nuts on the golf course.” Luke Wilson added, “They’re both kind of wildcards, it would be a good match,” similar to a Tiger Woods- Phil Mickelson competition.

Fortune Feimster revealed she was opening for Sandler on his stand-up tour when she got the role in The Hawk and “he was like ‘Oh, that’s awesome!'” But she said the characters are “so different; I think you love seeing these non-golf type guys in the very buttoned-up golf world. That’s the comedy, the juxtaposition. I think they would give each other a pretty hard time but have a good time doing it.”

Ferrell teased that maybe Happy could pop up in season two, and noted that he and Wilson had also been talking about doing a crossover with Owen Wilson’s golf-centered Apple series Stick. He mused about “having the characters from Stick come on The Hawk and vice versa, kind of like superhero movies where we merge universes. I’m sure all the actors would say yes and both streaming people [at Apple and Netflix] would be like ‘No! Keep it separate!'”

After creating iconic sports comedies like Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro, Ferrell also explained why he opted for a series this time over another movie.

“I was really interested in the possibility of getting to shoot something in Los Angeles and I was intrigued with playing a character for longer than 90 minutes in a film,” he said. “From a creative standpoint, getting to be in the writer’s room, really fleshing out not only this character but all of the characters and the story arc — a series affords you the time to do that stuff and I hadn’t done it before. It was another first and I loved every second of it.”

That character includes an eye-catching wardrobe, branded visor and some severe tan lines — which even led to Lonnie Hawkins headlining a Skims campaign. Feimster recalled how during the show’s first table read, “Will showed up in the outfit, smoking a cigarette, and we all knew as soon as he walked in the room; we were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be good.’ He’s walking in with music, he and Molly [Shannon, who plays his wife] come up face-to-face,” adding that she knew then “it was going to be an iconic character.”

The Hawk starts streaming July 16 on Netflix.