Oh, extras. Always the bridesmaid but never the bride with regards to speaking lines. Movies and TV shows will pretty much hire anybody to fill out the background of any given set, and it's nearly impossible to pay attention to all of them. This leads some background actors to basically do whatever they want and by the time anyone notices, it's already too late. Case in point, this episode of Friends in which a blonde extra in the background is drinking coffee and then chews it like it suddenly became solid.
This little gem was found by comedian Nick Turner, who posted his findings to Twitter. The moment comes from an episode in Season 6, in which Rachel begins to date the father (Bruce Willis) of a student that Ross also happens to be dating. Nick Turner has claimed to watch this scene 1000 times and he has come to the conclusion that the extra messed up big time.
Although she's strangely chewing, there is no plate in front of the actress, which means that she wasn't using the coffee to wash something down. One Twitter user suggested that she wasn't drinking coffee, but hot chocolate and that she was eating the marshmallows, to which Nick Turner relented that it was the best theory he had heard. Regardless, the whole thing is pretty amusing and bizarre.
It took Nick Turner years to notice this mistake, but that seems to be the way it goes with extras. There are dozens of examples of background actors either messing up or deliberately ruining a scene, and no one notices until much later. For example, in Teen Wolf there's a woman with her fly down during the big basketball victory scene. There's also an extra in The Dark Knight Rises who falls back during a fight scene without anyone actually touching him. And in Community's Law and Order spoof, two extras enter a scene with one wiping her mouth and the other zipping his pants up. Basically, all of these background actors were able to get away with murder simply because no one was paying attention to them.
Perhaps my favorite extra blunder, is this kid from Back to the Future Part III who points at his junk in the middle of the scene with a very pained face. The kid allegedly just desperately needed a bathroom break, but it's still really weird. Check it out below and see what I mean.
In hindsight, the Friends extra chewing coffee doesn't seem so bad anymore, does it?
If we haven't listed it, what is your favorite extra mess up? There's a Stormtrooper who bumps his head in A New Hope that's pretty good. Let us know in the comments section below.
