Mark Wahlberg Was Upset After This Scene Was Cut From ‘Ted 2’

Mark Wahlberg teamed up with Seth MacFarlane again for 2015’s Ted 2, a sequel to the 2012 smash hit Ted. But not everything Wahlberg shot for Ted 2 ended up in the movie when it hit theaters.

Mark Wahlberg once opened up about the ‘Ted 2’ scene that didn’t make the film

It was much easier for Wahlberg to jump on board Ted 2 than the original Ted. MacFarlane’s 2012 comedy feature about a grown man’s adventure with a talking teddy bear took some convincing for Wahlberg to do.

“When you hear about it, for the first time, it sounds absurd,” Wahlberg once told Collider. “There’s no good way to pitch it. It’s ridiculous. So, I was like, ‘Absolutely not!’ It was one of those things where I was getting pressure from every angle. And then, when I talked to another agent about another project that I was producing and looking at one of their clients, they were like, ‘I heard you’re doing Ted.’ I was like, ‘What is this thing!’”

Wahlberg wasn’t completely sold on the project after reading the film’s script. But his Ted opportunity reminded him of being at a crossroads with another film.

“So, I read the first 35 pages of the script and put it down. It was the same experience that I had with Boogie Nights, where I said, ‘This is either going to be brilliant, or it’s going to be awful.’ So then, it was a matter of sitting down with Seth [MacFarlane] and hearing what his vision was for it. And then, from that point, I saw the test and saw how the bear looked. I thought, ‘You know, this could be good. Take a chance,’” Wahlberg said.

His chance paid off, as Ted became both a critical and financial success. Its accomplishments convinced Wahlberg to jump on board for Ted 2 almost right away. MacFarlane also helped further inspire Wahlberg’s faith in a sequel.

“It helps that he came from television,” Wahlberg said. “You could have a group or a cast on a television show that people absolutely love and relate to and want to watch, and you can put them in a thousand different situations. With this, it was about keeping that balance between the heart and the humor. And then, the message of people being treated equally was a nice way to take it to another level.”

But what Wahlberg didn’t appreciate about Ted 2 was a particularly challenging scene that was cut out of the film. In an interview with The View (via Contact Music), Wahlberg reflected on a scene where he had to name 57 movie characters by memory. It took considerable time for the Planet of the Apes star to find the names he needed for the take. Only for it to not be used in the end.

“There was supposed to be a scene, because now that [teddy bear character] Ted is suing to be considered a person and have the same rights as everybody else, they say you have to pick a last name, so he’s like, ‘Oh great, we’ll play the name game again.’ So I have to rattle off 57 movie names… and they cut the scene out. It took me three months, four months to learn this stuff,” Wahlberg said.

Mark Wahlberg had to do a similar scene for ‘Ted’

The scene that didn’t make it to Ted was a callback to a previous scene in the original Ted. There, The Departed star had to rattle off several random girl names. This scene, however, made it in the first movie, although was incredibly challenging for Wahlberg.

“I always pride myself on knowing my lines and showing up on time and being prepared. But that’s the only time I ever had trouble with it,” Walhberg once told Entertainment Weekly

It was also noted that Wahlberg wrote each of the girl’s names by hand several times so he wouldn’t mess up. To him, it was even harder than rattling off the celebrity names he did in Ted 2.

“At least with this stuff it was easy, with the random girl names it was hard because there was nothing to connect anything to,” Wahlberg said. “At least with the movies I made a little book. I had each character from the movie with the picture with the name and then I’d write it down everyday in the notebook too. It’s stuck in my head forever, the only good thing is it’s a good party trick… It is one of those things, you have to learn it like a song and keep [reciting] it.”