It is a memorable episode of Friends: when Joey gets his head stuck in a giant turkey.
Yet it was only recently that Richard Curtis stumbled across the scene and found himself watching in disbelief. Curtis and Atkinson claim that the writers of Friends stole the idea from Mr Bean, which had aired an almost identical scene several years earlier.
“I’m absolutely dazzled by the Friends thing. I only saw it the other day. I literally can’t believe that happened there. Bizarre. Bizarre,” Curtis said.
The joke first appeared in an early 1990s episode of Mr Bean, broadcast by ITV, and was resurrected for Mr Bean’s big screen outing.
Atkinson said: “When we made the Bean movie in 1996, we decided to plagiarise ourselves and used the turkey on the head joke again. Also shooting in the 1990s was Friends, the famous American sitcom, and they stole the joke.
“And of course when it came out in the movie, everyone said, ‘Well, they stole that from Friends.’”
However, Atkinson was more magnanimous than Curtis, saying: “But in the end you can’t steal jokes. Jokes are there to be stolen - or to inspire.”
The pair were speaking in an ITV documentary, Happy Birthday Mr Bean, which airs on Saturday night and marks 30 years since the character made his first television appearance.
Atkinson and Curtis raised the possibility of a Mr Bean television comeback. “Old Bean is what we’re now thinking of doing. He’s always had a kind of grumpy selfishness which might adapt well,” said Curtis.
Atkinson said: “I still like him, I still find him funny and think I can still perform him. Never say never.”
Mr Bean ran for only 14 episodes over four years, and was a ratings triumph - 19 million viewers tuned in to the Christmas special. When Atkinson and Curtis decided to move it to the big screen, the ensuing two films took half a billion dollars between them at the box office.
Curtis was the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, and he revealed that the scene in which Hugh Grant is trapped in the cupboard of a hotel bedroom while a newlywed couple have an amorous encounter was actually a discarded Mr Bean scene. “Hugh’s performance isn’t as funny as Rowan’s would have been,” he joked.
January 09, 2021 at 11:00PM
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Mr Bean's giant turkey on head joke 'stolen' by Friends - Telegraph.co.uk
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