Danny DeVito Reveals Gross Secret Behind Bruce Bogtrotter Scene In Matilda

Danny DeVito's 1996 film Matilda is a much-loved children's classic. Anyone who's watched it will be entirely unable to forget the infamous Bruce Bogtrotter chocolate cake scene - and now a clip of the director revealing the truth behind that scene has gone viral. Watch below:

In the scene, greedy school student Bogtrotter is hauled up in front of the whole school and told to eat a slice of chocolate cake by the terrifying headteacher Miss Trunchbull. He does so, only to then see the rest of the cake wheeled out in front of him.

With the backing of his school mates, Bogtrotter eventually gets through the gigantic cake, leaving the teacher furious.

"It was really, really a fun scene to do," DeVito recalls in a documentary clip, which has since been posed to TikTok.

"He ate a lot of cake. We made big, huge, wonderful cakes."

Embeth Davidtz, who played Matilda's kindly class teacher Miss Honey, also appears in the clip.

"They must have filmed that for two weeks," she says.

"I remember when the rest of us would go home... Pam [Ferris, who played Miss Trunchbull] and Bruce would go back and they would film that cake scene."

The high point, however, is DeVito gleefully reminiscing about how disgusting it was to shoot the scene. The actor and director revels in telling the viewer that they wouldn't let Bogtrotter actor Jimmy Karz swallow the cake, instead forcing him to spit it out after every take.

"This is really gross... I'm going to tell you anyway," he says.

"What we did with Bruce Bogtrotter is we made him stuff his face - then I would cut the camera.

"He would spit it out, because if he would have eaten all that cake he would've really exploded. It was so big! It was so much cake."

The clip is interspersed with footage from the filming, during which DeVito is heard to tell the crew not to wipe Karz' mouth between takes.

Although he had another noteworthy side role in Adam Sandler's Wedding Singer, the actor's last credited role was in ER all the way back in 1998.

Pictures of him all grown-up surfaced in 2018 and, it has to be said, he looks quite the hunk these days. At the time he was training to be a doctor - for which we say absolutely fair play.

The showbiz life is not for everyone, so why not go and save lives instead?