Johnny Depp is currently out and about promoting Murder on the Orient Express, but just a few months ago he was doing the same thing for the latest flick in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. As part of the promotional stuff for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Johnny Depp dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow and surprised people at Disneyland with his antics. However, in retrospect, he told Graham Norton that dressing up to appear on an animatronic ride was a very bad idea. He said:
I did something that they---as soon as they did Pirates---I thought, how great would it have the opportunity to stand there as some sort of animatronic until the people come by? And then you start screaming and then, you know, scare them... All these years later I got the chance to do it so I was very excited. These boats were gonna come around the corner and they just sort of looked at me as they were coming around and I'm frozen and I went, 'Oy, what are you looking at?' Nothing back. You know what I got? All of the iPhones in the world going, 'Wow, well that's a pretty good animatronic, actually'... It was exhausting and such a bad idea.
Apparently, Johnny Depp thought it would be funny for a long time if he were to pop up in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. He eventually got the opportunity to do so prior to the fifth entry in the series, but it didn't work out in quite the way he expected, according to what he said on the Graham Norton Show. In recent years the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland actually added animatronic characters from the movies onto the ride, prominently including Captain Jack Sparrow. Therefore, people wouldn't be shocked to see the character suddenly appear on the ride, and I can see how the reaction may have surprised the famous actor.
If you haven't taken a look at the full Johnny Depp Disneyland ride experience, the theme park actually shot a video of what happened to share with fans around the world. The fans seem fairly pumped about it, so even if Depp thinks it was a bad idea, from a promotional standpoint, it seems to have worked. Check it out.
The Pirates stunt wasn't the first time that Johnny Depp popped up in Disneyland, either. He also surprised tourists ahead of the premiere of Alice Through The Looking Glass, by live streaming into a movie poster that was placed innocuously in the park.
Unfortunately---or perhaps fortunately for the actor himself--unlike Johnny Depp's last few projects, Murder on the Orient Express is not a Disney venture, so he shouldn't be popping up in any parks ahead of the big movie release on November 10. You can take a look at what else is heading to theaters with our full premiere schedule.
