Woody Harrelson wants Morgan Freeman to host ‘Saturday Night Live’
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” stars Morgan Freeman and Woody Harrelson talk fame and “Saturday Night Live” with USA TODAY’s Ralphie Aversa.
NEW YORK — Rosamund Pike praised the sights and scenes while filming “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” in Budapest and Abu Dhabi. However, the actress points out that there is one major difference on set from her past projects.
“The cast members were practicing card tricks,” Pike, 46, recalled to USA TODAY. “Everyone’s saying, ‘Do you want to see the trick?'”
The third installment of the “Now You See Me” magician-driven thriller series (in theaters now) is full of magic tricks. The original Four Horsemen (Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco) team up with a group of new Horsemen (Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt) to stop a villain (Pike) from selling the world’s largest diamond to an evil entity.
“I like to bring my big bad guy energy to the screen,” Pike says with a laugh, which he calls his “BVE.”
“It’s more fun to watch someone who is pretentious and self-absorbed and put themselves on a bit of a pedestal fall off that pedestal than it is to see someone who is just playing it safe,” she says.
For Eisenberg, filming wasn’t always safe. The actor took part in a fight scene in a room that rotates upside down. Everything in the room was stuffed with Styrofoam, except for one bookshelf where Eisenberg filmed most of the parts.
“You can see my fingers are still a little crooked,” Eisenberg, 42, says, raising his right hand and pointing his middle finger. Eisenberg believed he had broken a bone and wore a cast for the remainder of the production. “It was really fun up until that moment.”
Fisher was not injured. However, the actress pointed to another scene in which she is trapped inside a glass box that rapidly fills with sand and then water. Fisher said the scene took a week to film.
“Initially, people were asked to leave the tank to go to the bathroom,” Fisher, 49, said. “But later on I felt like people stopped asking, so I started worrying that some people were urinating in the water.”
I won’t give away any spoilers, but Fisher had good reason to be concerned. Of all the horsemen confined in glass boxes, she spent the most time underwater.
“Now You See Me: Now You Don’t”: Watch the final trailer here
Watch the final trailer for Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third installment in the magician-centric thriller series.
‘Now You See Me’ cast gets a magical assist from David Blaine
Harrelson showed up to the interview with a deck of cards. He has a neat trick of asking his co-star Morgan Freeman what hand he’d like to be dealt in a poker game. Except for the royal flush, Freeman chooses three aces. Harrelson, who has been shuffling this deck of cards the entire time, begins handing out the actors exactly what he asked for.
The surprise didn’t materialize. At the end of the interview, a familiar voice can be heard off-camera asking Harrelson to shuffle his cards so he can better see the trick. He is voiced by famous illusionist David Blaine.
“We couldn’t show that the cards were shuffled,” Blaine explains. “So it might look like (Freeman) said Ace, and it was set up.”
‘Now You See Me’ popcorn bucket contains magical illusions
A new popcorn bucket has been released as part of the third installment of the Now You See Me movie series.
Blaine continued to explain in detail what he had witnessed.
“What I saw was, right to God, (Freeman) said he had three aces,” he continued. “(Harrelson) wasn’t ready for that. Woody was shuffling his deck and pulled out three aces. This is unbelievable. He actually pulled an ace out of the deck and touched it. What he did was a high level of magic.”
Harrelson and Blaine are friends, and the magician joined the cast for dinner that night in New York. The next day, those in attendance were excited about what had happened.
“He ate a glass of wine,” Smith, 30, reveals. “And we took a photo, and he somehow changed the photo on his phone without even touching it.”
Ms. Greenblatt also recalled that Mr. Blaine changed the writing on the pen from “Sharpie” to 5 of Hearts, the card she had chosen.
All three of the new Horsemen said they appreciated magic in a new way after filming Now You See Me 3. But that doesn’t change how shocked they were by Blaine’s actions at dinner.
“What[Blaine]does is real magic,” Smith says. “It’s like real supernatural magic. Like, he’s a wizard.”
