8 Actors Who Were Confused While Filming Movie Scenes

The Marvel Cinematic Universe: baffling actors since day one.

Bad Boys Will Smith
Sony Pictures

Making movies can be a taxing and quite hectic experience for the actors involved.

Jetting around the world to different shoot locations, being called back in for reshoots months after leaving a character behind, and performing countless takes of the exact same scene are all staples of the job, and even just being on a film set - which are incredibly busy environments to work in - can be a stressful and difficult time.

It can also be quite a confusing time too, something that these actors can attest to.

Whether it's a studio that's so determined to maintain secrecy that they keep their actors in the dark, a director who deliberately withholds information in order to create a more genuine reaction, or a co-star doing something that leaves their fellow performers wondering what the hell is going on, some actors were left feeling rather bewildered and perplexed when they filmed certain movie scenes.

In some cases, you can even see this confusion embedded within the performance, but most of the time, the actors are doing their best to fight this feeling off.

Poor things.

8. Clark Gregg Didn't Know Why Coulson Was Going To New Mexico (Iron Man 2)

Bad Boys Will Smith
Marvel Studios

If you're going to join a Marvel movie, you'd better be prepared for a bit of confusion. The studio is completely and utterly devoted to the secrecy of its projects, which, on the downside, means that the actors are often left wondering where certain scenes fit within the wider cinematic universe, or even what their specific lines mean.

On that latter point, Phil Coulson himself, Clark Gregg, tells an amusing story about the time he spent filming 2010's Iron Man 2.

There's a moment in that movie where Coulson tells Tony Stark that he's been reassigned to New Mexico. This line is a bit of setup for 2011's Thor, which is predominantly set in that state. However, when he shot the scene, Gregg wasn't informed about this, forcing him to question the crew once they'd wrapped filming:

"During one of the scenes in Iron Man 2, they said, 'Tell him you have to go, tell him you’re going to New Mexico.' At the end of it, I said, 'Oh, what’s in New Mexico? Where am I going?' And they said, 'Oh s**t, Thor! Didn’t anybody tell you? Thor. You’re in Thor.' I was, 'That’s sweet!' Then all of a sudden I was here, in Santa Fe, in the desert with the Destroyer and I thought, 'This is amazing!'"

That's right: he recorded the New Mexico line without knowing that he was set to appear in Thor. At least it was a nice surprise when somebody told him.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.