As Zooey Deschanel reminisced on the famous Elf shower scene in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, she revealed that it was Will Ferrell's vocals that shocked her the most. "He said he wasn't a singer, so I wasn't expecting much," the actress explained. "But his dad is a great musician. I should've known he'd be secretly good!"
The scene, in which Deschanel gives her own rendition of "Baby It's Cold Outside," has become one of the most memorable in the entire film. Deschanel, however, revealed that the scene wasn't even in the original script.
"I remember [director] Jon Favreau telling me that they were catering it to whoever played the part," Deschanel recalled. "One actress they were looking at was good at skateboarding. But I had a cabaret act at the time and I was performing a lot. They knew that I was a singer, so they put that in to be my special thing that he could discover I was good at."
In the interview, Deschanel also shared that she didn't realize she would have to prerecord her vocals when she first heard about the scene. "They recorded some live vocals as an option, but they almost never use those just because you just can't make it right," she explained. "I'm in a shower, there's nowhere to hide a microphone." The scene may have been a learning experience for its actress, but it will be studied for years to come.
