Omri Katz was high as a kite filming Hocus Pocus
Hocus Pocus star Omri Katz admits he was experimenting with marijuana while filming the Disney classic
Professionalism be damned: sometimes, it’s kind of funny to hear that an actor was high during the shoot of a film. Especially if that film is a ’90s Disney classic geared toward children. Certainly, the star’s apparent inebriation did not affect anyone’s enjoyment of Hocus Pocus, in which Omri Katz played the young protagonist Max.
Katz was a teenager when he was working on the Kenny Ortega-directed Halloween comedy, and “That was at an age where I started experimenting with cannabis,” he tells Entertainment Weekly during a roundtable reunion for the film. “Let’s just say, some of those scenes, I was having a good old time.”
Katz doesn’t remember precisely the scenes in which he was blazed, but shares, “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,” he admits. “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!”
Vinessa Shaw, who played Katz’s love interest Allison, laughingly remembers the confrontation happening during a scene in which Max gets hit with a bolt of green magic courtesy of the witch Winifred (Bette Midler). “Yeah, but I didn’t look like I was getting zapped,” Katz responds. “I looked like I was getting high.” And that’s its own form of magic, isn’t it?
Katz previously expressed to the outlet some disappointment in not being included in the sequel, which The A.V. Club’s Todd Gilchrist calls “a surprisingly clever and, at times… heartfelt continuation of the Sanderson Sisters’ bewitching ways” in his C+ review of the film. Instead, the infamous witches (played by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker) face off with a new generation of teens (played by Whitney Peak, Belissa Escobedo, and Lilia Buckingham). If only Katz had laid off the marijuana on the original set, maybe he would’ve gotten the call…!