What do you make of J2's pranking on set? I'm always surprised when co-actors laugh with the pranks and praise how kind J2 are. If a co-worker grabbed me in the crotch or messed up my presentations, I'd be more than pissed off. It sounds more like bullying or a power thing then funny work anecdotes. I'd only fake laugh with the pranks they talk about if it was my boss who pulled them and my job was on the line. I'd still fantasise about cutting off his balls though. What do you think about it?
Most prank stories are fake, or what I like to call, fact-adjacent stories. Lies to you civilians, fake news to this generation. While we’re on the subject, most ~bloopers on gag reels are scripted.
So why tell you all these fake news? Because you the fans want those stories. At conventions there are always at least couple of fans asking about prank carried out by actors. If you watch interviews on Entertainment Tonight or other entertaiment media, the interviewers almost always asked for prank stories because they know fans love it, it feeds into the fanlore that the cast are “family” and acting is a fun, glamorous job. Chances are 90% of those prank stories never happened.
Prank stories humanizes the actors. Who wants to hear about how each of these scenes are took 20 takes? Or that 5-second reaction shots you see on screen took the whole damn afternoon to shoot? Who wants to hear about waiting for the crew to set up the shots and the series of retakes of the same scene over and over agian? The on-set acting is a tiny proportion of the day but it’s intense because you’re always “on” even while you’re waiting because it’s active waiting and you’re expected to immediately perfrom as soon as the director says “action”. It’s a grind and it’s exhausting but if you say that then you’re immediately told “oh that’s soooo hollywood, you’re just an overpaid diva, no, wait, you’re an overpaid actor.” Nobody wants to hear that. So instead you get what you asked for, silly stories that likely never happened.
That said, I don’t doubt that some nut tapping may have happened. If you watched The Walking Dead, Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Neegan helpfully explained the fine art of nut tapping. As soon as it was commerical break we immediately turned to the ladies in the room and said, “We don’t do that!” …..(anymore). We don’t rhino hump eachother anymore either but until JDM brings it up, we’re not going to mention it because you ladies always think it’s sexual. Nut tapping is just a form of joking around among (true) friends and the reaction is always really funny, it’s just “banter”. It’s why in the early days Misha used to complain about not being a recipient of the Js’ “pranks” because until that happens, he’s an outsider. So everytime I hear these crotch-grabbing prank stories, I think they’re either fake, or a shoutout to producers (”see, I’m friends with the Js!”), or staged to make the newbies feel accepted. I know, guys are weird.
