10 Movie Endings Actors Didn't Know Were Going To Happen

The final shot of Rian Johnson's Knives Out feels so brilliantly witty that it must've been included in Johnson's original, Oscar-nominated script, right?

Wrong.

In the closing scene, Marta (Ana de Armas) stands on the balcony of her recently inherited mansion and presides over the degenerate members of the Thrombey family, while drinking from a mug that reads, "My house, my rules, my coffee!," with only the words "My house" visible above her fingers.

It's a simple yet brilliantly clever visual gag, and yet one which Johnson and de Armas accidentally stumbled upon while shooting the scene. While appearing on the The Empire Film Podcast, Johnson said:

"It was kind of an accident. A happy accident. I knew I wanted her to like sip tea in the final shot, and I had had separately the idea of 'My house, my rules, my coffee,' as that first shot in the movie - after that first big dramatic shot of the house, breaking the tension with kind of a goofy modern joke mug. And I was like, 'Oh she can have that at the end!' Then when we were doing that close-up, she was up in the balcony and I yelled up, 'Sip the tea!' and she brought it into frame and those words came up and I was just like, 'Oh that’s pretty nice.'"

Better yet, once Johnson knew he had solid gold in the can, he even went back and adjusted a prior shot of Marta holding the mug, using VFX to move Ana de Armas' fingers to cover the words until the very final shot. Genius.