You’d think a one percent Rotten Tomatoes score and a well-deserved reputation as one of the worst movies in the history of cinema would be the lasting legacy of The Master of Disguise, but a long-running urban legend has followed the film everywhere in the two decades since.
It sounds far too ridiculous to be true, but the story went that when Dana Carvey returned to the set alongside the cast and crew following pause in production in the aftermath of 9/11, he led the gathered masses in a prayer of remembrance while dressed in full costume as the Turtle Club dude, which was already the only scene that most people remember.
There was never any confirmation or denial that it was either factually accurate or incredibly wide of the mark, but Carvey has let the cat out of the bag by admitting that it’s 100 percent a matter of record that he wore the turtle suit to pray for those lost in the atrocity during an appearance on the Fly on the Wall podcast.
“It’s kind of a sensitive topic, but after 9/11 I was shooting a movie called Master of Disguise. We took an appropriate time off and went back to shooting and I was playing — if you’ve seen the movie, kids — the Turtle Man, with a bald cap and a weird thing on my lip and a big green shell outfit.
What happened was they obfuscated it. I was in [the costume] all that day and then they said, ‘We’re going to have a group prayer about 9/11.’ And I couldn’t get the thing — I would’ve held everyone for a half hour getting all that prosthetic makeup off — so, as I remember it, everyone else was [wearing] civilian clothes, I’m dressed as the Turtle Man, with a bald head, and I’m holding hands and I’m lowering my head and praying and I just thought at the moment: ‘This is very strange.'”
Urban legends are more often than not debunked eventually, but we never expected Carvey to come clean after 20+ years and confirm once and for all that he led a 9/11 prayer while dressed as Turtle Man.
Published: Apr 6, 2023 11:40 am