Water for Elephants featured extra, Jonathon Moore, plays the Benzini Brothers Circus “Tall Man”. He gave a great account of his experience to the Central KY News Journal where he discusses the rigours of working on set, the WFE star power and “initiating” Rob. Here’s an excerpt.

Jonathon Moore

Robert Pattinson stood inches from me. Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz, both Oscar winners, were only feet away. Directly in front of me, and behind the camera, sat Rodrigo Prieto, an Oscar-nominated director of photography.

I should have been completely awestruck at the level of talent that surrounded me. Yet the only thing I could truly focus on was my aching feet and legs due to the flat slippers the wardrobe department had given me to wear – and having to stand on them for hours on end.

Playing the Tall Man, a non-speaking, featured-extra role in the film “Water for Elephants” proved to be equal parts fun and exhausting.

Based on the popular book of the same name by Sara Gruen, the story is about a young man who joins a Depression-era circus. I was cast as a part of a group of sideshow performers that included a midget, Wolfboy, the Fat Lady, the Strong Man and a couple of contortionists.

My job was to be present in the background and, in some cases, right up next to the lead actors. I suppose my claim to fame was the scene in which I and a few other men physically shoved Pattinson to the front of a group of circus workers so that he could be properly “initiated” into the circus life by being sprayed with water, pelted with pies and kissed by the showgirls.

But there were other scenes, too, including one on the sleeping car of the train, another when I stood with Pattinson and a few others and watched Witherspoon cavort with an elephant.

You can read the rest HERE.

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