‘Wedding Crashers’: Vince Vaughn Says It Took 4 Days to Film the Infamous Dinner Scene
Wedding Crashers is considered one of the funniest comedy hits of its time, and rightfully so. The film was so popular it grossed over $34 million in sales its first weekend. There’ve been talks of a sequel and even a script in the works, but the original castmates are hesitant to ruin a good thing.
Wedding Crashers star Vince Vaughn remembers the complexity of filming some scenes — including its infamous dinner scene — which took seemingly forever to film. He and the rest of the cast worry they would be hard-pressed to capture that same energy again. But fans remain hopeful.
Crashing weddings became a thing
Wedding Crashers, which inspired an uptick in real-life wedding crashing, follows friends John (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy (Vince Vaughn) as they spend their weekends sneaking into strangers’ weddings. There, they hope to meet and seduce eligible women.
The pair winds up crashing the wedding of the daughter of the U.S. secretary of the treasury (played by Christopher Walken). Knowing the secretary will host an epic event, John and Jeremy use their comedic charm to befriend members of the wedding party and bluff their way through the evening. By the end of the night, they’ve been invited back to Secretary Cleary’s home for an epic weekend party.
The ‘Wedding Crashers’ cast features famous names
As the story progresses, Jeremy ends up falling hard for Cleary’s daughter Claire (Rachel McAdams). But she’s already dating Sack Lodge, played by Bradley Cooper. And Secretary Cleary’s wife, Kathleen, shows a fondness for John. In a memorable scene, Jane Seymour (playing Kathleen) bares all for a comedic cougar moment.
Isla Fisher and Keir O’Donnell play Cleary’s two other children. They become Jeremy’s love interests.
The most memorable ‘Wedding Crashers’ scene took four days to shoot
In an episode of the podcast Life Is Short, host Justin Long asked Vaughn to discuss the process of filming the iconic dinner table scene in Wedding Crashers. According to Vaughn, the actors found it difficult to coordinate their reactions to events. He explained they would try to match one another’s energy, but because the scenes were filmed days apart, it took a lot of patience and skill.
“You’re going around a table with multiple people …,” he related, “and you’re matching these extreme moments and it’s hard to maintain that energy sometimes.”
Vaughn’s humor and Grandma’s deadpan were a winning combination
That crazy dinner scene is memorable to fans too. Viewers had no idea it was so complicated to film. They simply saw Gloria (Fisher) grab Jeremy’s crotch under the table as her entire family sat around it. And hilarity ensued. But the most notable aspects of the humor weren’t scripted.
The grandma, played by Ellen Albertini Dow, makes horrendous homophobic comments throughout the meal — which, apparently, Vince Vaughn fed to her. Seymour admitted to Variety that the whole scene became a game of what they could get the grandmother to say.
“She had no idea what she was saying. Vince was on the other side and feeding her lines.” Seymour revealed. “She just looked deadpan and said whatever it was … but we were dying because this just became a sport, like what can we get out of her mouth?”
It became an iconic moment. And according to USA Today, fans might be treated to more hilarious moments if plans for the Wedding Crashers sequel pan out.
