A TikTok gumshoe has recently uncovered a fleeting, well, freaky detail in the 2003 Disney flick, “Freaky Friday.” It seems a grown-up adult was placed as a stand-in for an 11-year old.
In the scene, Harry (Ryan Malgarini), who was 11 when the film premiered, can be seen exchanging fortune cookies with his grandfather (Harold Gould) in a restaurant, per Insider,
In an attempt to prevent the same body-switch mishap of Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan’s characters, the owner of the Chinese restaurant, Pei-Pei (Rosalind Chao), shoves characters down to grab the cookies.
Right before Chao bashes into the actors, it's clear that Harry is no longer being played by Malgarini. Instead, a much older stunt double has taken his place, the TikTok revealed.
"So tell me why I'm watching 'Freaky Friday' and tell me why I'm barely noticing the stunt-double," TikTok user @thegabbienicole says in the clip.
"It's Harry's stunt-double, watch," she says before zooming in. "I have to pause that for you because, who? Sir?"
While it seems weird, like some ghost appearance video, the switch was likely done to ensure the young actor wouldn't be injured in the scene. And assuming it would only be visible for a milli-second, they probably just grabbed the closest human with the closest haircut.
Although, “Freaky Friday” (a remake of the 1976 original) is about an adult and child switching bodies, so maybe this was some intentional meta-mistake by the director or editor.
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TikTok — usually reserved for mom/daughter dance routines, or silly dad dance routines, or dog dance routines, or hit song lip-syncing — has become an outlet for vintage body-double reveals.
Given the widescreen format allowances of streaming services, the just-out-of-frame stand-ins often used to reshoot scenes in old TV shows and films can now become visible for eerie instances.
“Friends” fans being fanatical “Friends” fans, they seem to have found the most of such mistakes, like this one, where Ross’ dad was replaced for a second.
Other reasons for such visual slip-ups, like Screen Actors Guild rules or simple lighting reasons, often account for lead actors not being available for quick re-shot fill-in scenes.
So TikTokkers, the relevance of this brand of detective work might be winding down. Back to your dance routines!
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