Will Ferrell's Reaction Reportedly Wasn't Acting During One Scene In Elf

So, you’ve probably seen the part of the 2003 film where Ferrell’s character, Buddy the Elf, is testing out a load of jack-in-the-box toys, with them all going off in his face as he goes.

Well, we can see that Ferrell's character gets more and more shocked as he goes along, and there’s a good reason behind that, it turns out.

You see, the director Jon Favreau reportedly had a remote control on the jack-in-the-box toys that he could trigger at any time, and he wanted to get a bit of extra shock value out of the actor's performance, so let that one off a little bit later in order to give him a jump.

As you can see from the last reaction, it definitely worked.

Ferrell appears to almost break character at one point, looking like he got a genuine fright.

This detail was reportedly outlined by Favreau on the director’s commentary of the Elf DVD.

Whilst we’re not going to trawl through exactly what was said during the scene, some brave researchers have already done that for us.

They wrote: “For the jack in the box gag, it was written in the script that he was just testing them.

“Favreau had a remote control to trigger the last one Buddy tests, and the director waited a split second longer than he would have normally before setting it off in order to get the appropriate reaction from Ferrell.

“Likewise, Favreau felt that, as the director, it was his job to put Ferrell in various situations and see how the actor would react.

“Favreau notes the more awkward the situation the funnier Ferrell made it.”

That’s almost certainly true, Will Ferrell is fantastic at bringing the best out of what could otherwise be a ridiculously cringe-inducing situation.

Anyway, the next time you decide to tackle this particular Christmas treat, you’ll have a nice fact to impress your friends with whilst you do.