Hocus Pocus star Omri Katz reveals that he was high while filming certain important scenes in the Halloween classic. The original Hocus Pocus, which was helmed by High School Musical director Kenny Ortega, hit theaters on July 16, 1993. It followed three witch sisters - Winnie (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary (Kathy Najimy) - who are resurrected in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts after the Black Flame Candle is lit.
Although those stars and their iconic makeup and costuming are the primary sources of nostalgia for the film, which received a sequel earlier this year on Disney+, the main story of the film belonged to the young actors playing the residents of Salem. Specifically, the film follows Katz as Max Dennison, a young teenager whose family just moved to town. Other key figures in the film are his little sister Dani, played by Thora Birch, and his classmate and potential love interest Allison Watts (Vinessa Shaw).
Recently, EW sat down for a round table interview with the cast of the original Hocus Pocus. During the conversation, Katz revealed that he was 16 during production of the film and "at an age where [he] started experimenting with cannabis." Director Kenny Ortega confronted him about "misperforming and not hitting my keys or marks," which was a wake-up call for the young actor to start behaving more professionally while on set. Read his full quote below:
That was at an age where I started experimenting with cannabis. Let's just say, some of those scenes, I was having a good old time.
I'll tell you what I do remember: I was misperforming and not hitting my keys or marks. Kenny comes up to me and practically grabs me by the shirt, and he was like, "Are you high?" and I was like, "No," and of course, I was. We got it done, but that was kind of a wake-up call, like, Omri, you've got to be a little more professional and make sure you hit your cues!
Hocus Pocus Is A Modern Halloween Classic
This revelation will come as a surprise to some fans of the original Hocus Pocus. However, considering how many teenagers populate the sets of this kind of Disney project, there are probably plenty of stories of adolescent misbehavior that stars are merely not willing to share with the general public. However, this doesn't interfere with the fact that Hocus Pocus is a minted classic.
Although Hocus Pocus had a lukewarm box office haul (potentially due to it being released in the Summer rather than Fall) and was given a critical drubbing at the time, over the years it became a must-have video rental for families during the Halloween season. The generations of kids who watched it on VHS at the time have grown up and shown their own kids, raising the film's reputation slowly over the intervening decades. Now the film's popularity is at the point that it has an entire themed section in Spirit Halloween stores and the belated sequel Hocus Pocus 2 was released to much more general fanfare than it originally received.
Source: EW