Ed Helms actually had one of his teeth removed for The Hangover to look like a 'nerdy hillbilly'.
Across The Hangover trilogy, Helms' Stu is particularly unfortunate when it comes to their drunken misadventures: in the first movie, he ends up marrying a stripper he didn't even know; in the sequel, he gets a face tattoo just like Mike Tyson and has sex with someone he regrets; and by the end of the third film, he has a pair of fake breasts.
However, of all his accidents, the missing tooth remains the most iconic. In the movie, Zach Galifianakis' Alan bet Stu he could pull out his own tooth to prove he was an amazing dentist, and there's even photos to prove it. In real life, it turns out he actually had it removed.
Helms recently appeared on Hot Ones to promote True Story With Ed and Randall. While chomping down on spicy chicken wings, The Office star revealed the price he paid for audiences to have a laugh in The Hangover.
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Host Sean Evans asked if it's true there were no special effects as a result of Helms' adult incisor never actually growing in properly. 'Yes, that is true,' he replied.
'It was in the script, so right away once we got into preproduction, Todd [Phillips], the director, was like, ‘How are we gonna do this? What are you comfortable with?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know. We’ll talk to the visual effects guys',' Helms continued.
'And they said, 'Okay, we’ll just try blacking it out.’ So we did a little screen test just Halloween pirate costume-style with just some black on the tooth, which actually looks good in person, but on camera it looks terrible.
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'I was like, ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but this tooth is actually fake in my mouth. And I can ask my dentist if we could take it out.’ I mean, it’s been a permanent implant since I was a teenager. I went to my dentist and he said, ‘Oh yeah, no problem.''
The dentist explained how they'd simply remove the crown and pop something in his gum to protect it and keep it healthy. However, he had to go back and film The Office while all this was happening, so he had to wear a retainer which made him sound 'drunk' because his tongue couldn't form words. 'But, we got through it,' he said.
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Topics: Entertainment, Film and TV