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Filming the boat ride to Stu’s wedding in the The Hangover Part II was not only exhilarating for Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis, but a bit terrifying as well, Helms, 51, told Jesse David Fox on Vulture’s Good One podcast.
Fans of The Hangover likely remember the memorable speedboat scene in which Stu (played by Helms) travels to Thailand with his best friends Phil (Bradley Cooper) and Alan (Galifianakis). In an effort to make it to the wedding on time for Stu to walk down the aisle, the group takes a speedboat to the resort.
The whole scene where the men are speeding down Bangkok’s Chao Phraya River was filmed by a crew from a helicopter flying what felt like dangerously close overhead.
“We had this French helicopter pilot who was legendary as being, like, unbelievably good,” Helms recalled. “He was doing these insane sweeps around us. We’re going, like, 50 miles an hour in this giant boat and this helicopter is swooping over us. It felt like a military operation and we’re just whooping it up on this boat.”
While the scene was “so cool” to film, The Office actor admitted that he and Galifianakis were a bit traumatized by exactly how close the pilot got. As a joke, Galifianakis had a little gift that he left for the pilot to show just how terrified they were.
“That night, Zach got a Snickers bar and mashed it into a pair of tighty-whities and had it delivered to the chopper pilot’s hotel room as like a thank you for scaring the s— out of us,” Helms continued. “That was awesome.”
Helms confessed on Conan O’Brien’s podcast Needs a Friend in 2022 that he experienced a lot of anxiety from his “tornado of fame” following the release of The Hangover, saying, “it was very overwhelming.”
“My public persona had risen gradually,” Helms told O’Brien, prior to The Hangover’s release in 2009. Prior to that he starred as Andy Bernard beginning on the third season of The Office and served as a correspondent on The Daily Show from 2002 to 2009.
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Helms said that he “really was reeling a lot of the time … in the aftermath of The Hangover,” and “getting scripts for all these different kinds of projects.”
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However despite the anxiety he felt, Helms told PEOPLE exclusively in 2024 while walking the red carpet for Netflix’s premiere of Family Switch that he would be down to film The Hangover for a fourth time.
“Of course,” Helms shared of the possibility. “I mean, [costars] Bradley, Zach, [director] Todd [Phillips] — these are some of my favorite people on the planet, so I would do anything with them. Oh my God, I would do anything with those guys.”
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Galifianakis told PEOPLE while attending the premiere of Disney’s live-action reimagining of Lilo & Stitch, however, that he doesn’t see the sequel happening.
“I don’t think people care,” he said of the fandom. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think there is an audience for it. That’s the way I see it.”
And while their costar Cooper said he would be interested in signing up for a fourth movie in an “instant,” “I don’t think Todd is ever going to do that,” Cooper told The New Yorker Radio Hour of director Phillips.
