More than 30 years after beloved ’90s family-friendly movie Hocus Pocus cast its Halloween spell on moviegoers, the behind-the-scenes stories just keep getting better. While most fans remember the 1993 Disney classic for its Sanderson sister chaos and cult-favorite nostalgia, one of the film’s stars has shared a hazier recollection from set, one involving pumpkins, marijuana, and a lesson in “never again.”
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly actor Tobias Jelinek, who played leather-jacketed bully Jay in Hocus Pocus (but unfortunately not in its sequel) confirmed that he did, in fact, smoke weed with his co-star Omri Katz (aka Max Dennison) during production. But unlike Katz, who previously told EW in 2022 that he was “having a good old time” experimenting with cannabis throughout filming, Jelinek says his one and only attempt was a total disaster. He explained:
It was the pumpkin-smashing scene. Little Thora Birch was in there with us, probably wondering what's going on with these teenagers.
According to Jelinek, Katz, who bought a Volkswagen bus while filming and even took director Kenny Ortega to a Grateful Dead concert in San Francisco, left a “giant nug of California green weed” in his microwave as a gift. Later, Katz convinced him to join in during lunch before rehearsing their big Halloween night scene. He continued:
I didn't smoke weed that much. I took a few puffs, I went into that rehearsal, and I was a mess. We were supposed to be running this scene with Kenny. I really couldn't hang. He was smoking weed throughout that entire shoot, and he knew how to handle it. I remember saying, 'Never again, Omri!'
Things didn’t get better once the cameras rolled. Jelinek recalled:
So embarrassed afterward, because I knew my eyes were red. Kenny was like, 'What's going on with you, Tobias?' I was just toast. I couldn't hear anything!
To his credit, Katz has always been open about his Hocus Pocus haze. In a 2022 interview, the actor admitted he was “misperforming and not hitting [his] marks” during some scenes, prompting Ortega to call him out directly. Katz laughed that it became a wake-up call to be “a little more professional,” though he clearly still had plenty of fun along the way.
The now 48-year-old former Disney star went on to start his own cannabis brand, Mary Danksters. At the same time, Jelinek continued acting, most recently appearing as serial killer Richard Speck in the 2025 TV premiere Monsters: The Ed Gein Story, available to stream with a Netflix subscription.
For both men, the Hocus Pocus experience remains a beloved, if occasionally foggy, part of their careers. And with Disney developing Hocus Pocus 3, several original cast members, including Katz, Vinessa Shaw, and Jason Marsden, have already said they’d be “100 percent down” to return if asked. Let’s make that happen, Disney, because they were sorely missed in Hocus Pocus 2.
Until then, fans can revisit the original and its 2022 sequel, Hocus Pocus 2, both streaming now with your Disney+ subscription.
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