Will Ferrell spent an entire week preparing to show up as a beer-drinking, candy-cigarette-smoking Buddy the Elf at a Los Angeles Kings game in late December. The bit was part of a social experiment spurred solely by a bizarre idea he had and his curiosity about how people would react to it.

“That was just… I get these weird ideas every now and then,” Ferrell said on a recent episode of Jason and Travis Kelce’s New Heights podcast. The actor fabricated a whole backstory about Buddy being laid off from his job at the North Pole (the consequence of being too much of a cotton-headed ninny-muggins personality hire) and crashing out as a result. He joked at the time that it was a “tough holiday season,” but really, he was just in a silly, goofy mood.

“I told my wife, ‘Over the break, it would be funny if I just got a Buddy the Elf costume and didn’t shave for a week, and I’m just sitting there with a candy cigarette, and I’m just gonna sit there for a period and see how people react,’” he explained. His season tickets for the L.A. Kings include seats right by the glass, giving him the perfect location to execute his plan. “The reaction was insane,” the comedian added. “Like, what is he doing? Is he promoting something? But occasionally, I just like to do weird things like that just to stir it up.”

The only promotional run Ferrell might find himself on soon would be connected to You’re Cordially Invited, the comedy film he co-produced and appears in alongside Reese Witherspoon. The movie is scheduled for release on Prime Video on Jan. 30. It will mark the actor’s first project since last year’s Will & Harper documentary and his voice role in Despicable Me 4.