SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains a very minor spoiler for The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. If you don’t want to know anything before your screening, continue with caution!
The cast of The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is absolutely stacked – featuring a voice cast that includes Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish, Stephanie Beatriz, Will Ferrell, Charlie Day, Nick Offerman, Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, and many more. Still, though, the film does find its ways to surprise you with cameos, and arguably the best is the surprise appearance by Bruce Willis.
He only appears in two scenes in the feature, but it was enough of a surprise that I felt compelled to ask writers Phil Lord and Chris Miller about it at the recent LEGO Movie 2 Los Angeles press day. They detailed not only how the inspiration for the idea came about, but how they actually got Bruce Willis to come aboard:
Phil Lord: It started with, 'Okay, well, Lucy is going to take her hair off.'Chris Miller: 'Who does she think she looks like?' And that was the first one that came to mind. We're like, 'Well we could ask him.' And he said yes, crazily enough. And it was really funny to record him when he was sort of like, 'Wait, what's happening here?' And we're like, 'We're just going to give you a bunch of LEGO, you can take it home.Phil Lord: And he's like, 'Fantastic.'Chris Miller: And he was so delightful.
Bruce Willis has a bit of voice-over/animated movie experience on his resume, including Over The Hedge, Beavis And Butthead Do America, and the Look Who’s Talking movies – but his work in The LEGO Movie 2 is his first in the arena in about 13 years. As a result, it sounds like he wasn’t super at home in the recording booth, but they made it work, and apparently he was additionally happy to get some free LEGOs out of the deal.
Learning how it was specifically the hair removal gag that inspired the cameo (a.k.a. the first moment Bruce Willis appears in the movie), I followed up asking about the second sequence where he shows up – namely when Lucy finds him living in the vents she is trying to crawl through. This is obviously a callback to Die Hard, and perfectly fitting for a Willis-driven gag – so I asked if that bit was added after the actor said yes:
Chris Miller: I think yes, that's correct.Phil Lord: Yeah. Once we had him in the booth we were like, 'We got a few things...'
You can watch Phil Lord and Chris Miller discuss the origins and execution of the Bruce Willis cameo in The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part by clicking play on the video below!
Based on a script by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and directed by Mike Mitchell, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part arrives in theaters this Friday – and we still have plenty more coming your way from my interviews with the stars and filmmakers. Look for the film at your local cineplex this weekend, and stay tuned for more stories about the making of the blockbuster here on CinemaBlend.
