The 2024 Oscars are coming up and Poor Things is one contender that nominees have to watch out for. The film is nominated in a total of eleven categories, including Best Supporting Actor for Mark Ruffalo. Mark Ruffalo played the role of the film’s antagonist, Duncan Wedderburn, and we have never seen him quite like this ever before.
Now, we all know that Mark Ruffalo is undoubtedly amongst the finest that Hollywood has to offer. However, Poor Things proved that there are times when someone of his caliber can too feel insecure. On one hand, there was Mark Ruffalo feeling insecure on the set of Poor Things, and on the other, there was his co-star Willem Dafoe using his insecurity to play a prank on him. He even enlisted an ex-co-star to make it seem all the more believable.
Willem Dafoe Plays a Prank on Mark Ruffalo
Shooting a full-blown movie of over two hours can get extremely stressful. What we see in a couple of hours, takes months of hard work and a ton of ups and downs to come to fruition. Playing pranks on film sets is one foolproof way of keeping things fun and lighthearted throughout. Clearly, Willem Dafoe knows this all too well.
Speaking with Esquire, Dafoe elaborated on the prank he pulled off on his Poor Things co-star, Mark Ruffalo. The prank was based on the fact that Ruffalo, despite being an unbelievably talented actor, was not too sure that he was doing a good job in the role. Dafoe said,
“You know, Mark he’s brilliant in this movie, and when we were rehearsing he kept on belly-aching like ‘Oh, I don’t know how I feel, is it too much? Maybe I’m not right for this.’ He was I think just reaching for reassurance, and we were happy to give it to him, to a degree. But I thought ‘Oh man, let’s give this guy a good little scare.’”
However, Dafoe couldn’t have pulled off the brilliant prank without the help of his The Card Counter co-star, Oscar Isaac. Ruffalo knew that Isaac was filming at the same studio as them but for a different film. The Avengers actor worried that Isaac was there to replace him in Poor Things. Dafoe took this information and used it to his prank’s benefit.
“Oscar Isaac was shooting at another part of the studio where we were in Budapest. And Mark one day said ‘I saw Oscar Isaac is here. Is he, he, he, he, he here to replace me?’ I said ‘Oh no, no, don’t be silly.’ And the next day, since I knew Oscar because I’d worked with him I said ‘come over.’ And he came over at lunch, and we staged this little scene like he’d come to tell Mark that it was over and he was taking over. But, that lasted for about a second, but it was a good joke, yeah? A good practical joke.”
While the prank lasted for just a moment, it was probably enough to knock the ground out from under his feet.
Mark Ruffalo is Traumatized from his Theater Days
Let’s take a look at the other side of the coin and see what Ruffalo thought about the whole prank. Thanks to the actor’s insecurity, people on the set of Poor Things would constantly make a joke about him getting replaced. Of course, you don’t just replace someone like Ruffalo but alas, he let his self-doubt clouded his self-confidence.
Talking about the prank, Ruffalo stated (via Variety),
“They were teasing me that Oscar Isaac was going to take the role from me when we were in rehearsal. Willem brought [Oscar Isaac] over at lunchtime and Oscar came up to me and he’s like, ‘Hey man, I’m sorry, but it’s just not going to work out.”
Wondering what was his reaction to the whole set-up? Well, he actually fell for it, even if it was just for a moment. Ruffalo continued, “I was just kind of like: ‘Oh sh-t, is this really happening?’”
The actor recalled that the reason why he got spooked so easily was probably because of a bad experience during his theater days.
“I literally got fired a week before opening. It was my big break, and I was literally so traumatized. So anytime I hit a bump, I’m like, ‘That’s it, they’re firing me.’”
Despite his worries, Ruffalo’s performance as Duncan was so incredible that he ended up receiving his fourth ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination. How do we reassure him that he is one of the best actors we have ever seen on screen?
Poor Things is available to stream on Hulu.
