Trivia / The Greatest Showman

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Part of Hugh Jackman's enthusiasm for the project was due to the fact that it was an original musical and that he'd get to originate a role for the first time in his career.
• Blooper: Several times during "This is Me", Tom Thumb can be seen disappearing and re-appearing in shots. After his big solo, he has suddenly disappeared in the next shot even though he was just standing next to Lettie while singing and is never seen again (not even appearing in the overhead shot) until the troupe sings "Because we are glorious", where he can be seen standing along with the rest of the troupe. Then, when they start dancing, he disappears AGAIN and is gone for the rest of the song until the very end, when he can be seen standing near the end of the number, despite the circus troupe dancing and jumping around, showing he couldn't have possibly been in the spot he was standing around in.
  • Also during "This is Me", a stagehand can be seen behind Zendaya ironically holding what appears to be either Sam Humphrey himself or a dummy stand-in for Humphrey.
  • During "The Other Side", when Phillip jumps off of the bar stool, a platform used to make the stool stable can be seen propping up the stool for an entire minute.
• The Cast Show Off:
  • Zendaya did all her own trapeze stunts. She had to learn how during production.
  • The tattooed man is played by Shannon Holtzapffel, who helped choreograph the film, and is a very famous and successful dancer and choreographer.
  • The bartender during "The Other Side" is Cloud, aka Daniel Campos, who is another successful dancer and Holtzapffel's assistant choreographer.
• Cast the Expert: The bartender in the sequence for "The Other Side" is played by the aforementioned Cloud, a famous name in choreography and particularly known for the style he performs in that sequence, a combination of dance battling and rhythmic tricks.
• Dawson Casting: Hugh Jackman plays P.T. Barnum as soon as he hits his 20's as does Michelle Williams as his wife. To say some critics made fun of this would be an understatement.
• Deleted Role: Originally Diahann Carroll was going to play Joice Heth, a 161-year-old African-American slave who is hired by P. T. Barnum. But her scenes were cut out of the final film.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Tom Thumb is played by Sam Humphrey, who has dwarfism but is also 27 cm taller than Tom was in real life. Gracie said he had Sam walk on his knees for the whole film and digitally edited his limbs where needed in post-production.
• Enforced Method Acting: According to the director's commentary, the fire that burns down the museum actually got out of control, and the real fire department had to be called, but he told the cameras to keep rolling for reference footage to use in post-production, so some shots of the actors' running in fear and coughing up smoke is for real.
• Fake American:
  • Hugh Jackman continues his tradition of playing Americans when he's really Australian.
  • Australian Sam Humphrey also plays the American Tom Thumb. Humphrey was cast because he was friends with Jackman and fellow Australian Michael Gracey.
• Follow the Leader: The second musical extravaganza about P.T. Barnum's circus ambitions, following the Broadway hit Barnum, which starred Jim Dale and Glenn Close.
• In Memoriam: The film is an accidental epitaph in a meta-sense, since the real Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus was shuttered during production.
• Missing Trailer Scene: Several.
  • When Barnum is trying to convince Charles Stratton to join his show and drops the Tag Line "No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else." Also, the line "that's the point of my show" was excised.
  • Barnum claiming to have invented the term "show business" is not in the film.
  • When Barnum and Charity are on the roof of their tenement with their kids, and Barnum says "Girls, I think I've had an idea." The movie goes right to him putting the idea into action after seeing visions of circus animals in the shadows of his candle shadow contraption.
  • There's also multiple shots clearly from the freak recruitment scene that didn't make it into the movie including a girl who pulls out a sword and the "Irish" man telling Barnum he isn't Irish, to which Barnum says "We'll work on the accent".
• Money, Dear Boy: Keala Settle was primarily concerned with whether or not the job would pay enough for her to pay her bills. She had no idea the film would resonate so much with viewers.
• Non-Singing Voice:
  • Rebecca Ferguson was dubbed by The Voice alum Loren Allred, due to Jenny Lind being considered the best singer in the world. Rebecca did however sing the song live on set in front of the extras, and because she's both a superb actress and no slouch in the singing department herself, the audience reactions are not faked.
  • Ziv Zaifman was Ellis Rubin's dubbed singing voice; Zaifman's voice sounded like a young version of Jackman, but he's blond, while Rubin resembles a young Jackman.
• Real-Life Relative: Hugh Jackman's wife and daughter appear in the stands during the circus.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Kesha's cover of "This is Me". The singer was on the heels of a turbulent legal battle with then-producer Dr. Luke.
  • For that matter, Keala Settle, somehow nailing the role of Lettie based on the strength of her rendition of "This is Me", was just as reluctant as Lettie to take it, lending added meaning to the line "you don't know it yet, but they are going to love you."
• Saved from Development Hell: The film was in development hell for ages because producers were reluctant to invest in an original musical. Naturally after the success of La La Land (which faced similar difficulties) it was greenlit.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: The younger of the two Barnum daughters could easily be Michelle Williams' real child, specifically sharing her dimples, eye squint, and complete facial structure as well as resembling her more generally.
• Sleeper Hit: After an unimpressive $8 million opening weekend, many wrote off the film as a bomb. Reviews from critics were mixed but audiences generally liked it, and it benefited from strong word of mouth. Its second weekend was twice as large as its opening, and held up extremely well after that, becoming a surprise success and running for nearly eight months (including strong returns from repeat viewers and sing-along showings), the longest theatrical run of any film released in 2017. It eventually grossed twice its budget domestically and three times its budget outside the US. It was the best-selling home video release of 2018, and its soundtrack was the only album to sell a million copies.
• So My Kids Can Watch: Michelle Williams said in an interview that she was happy that she could take her daughter, as well as her daughter's girl scout troupe, to a movie she was in for once.
• Viral Marketing: Of the old-fashioned "word of mouth" sense. The film opened poorly, presumably due to middling reviews. However, it got fantastic reception from LGBT, people of color, and women, and grossed $435 million.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Anne Hathaway, Carey Mulligan and Elliot Page were considered for the part of Jenny Lind before Rebecca Ferguson was cast.
  • Keala Settle only intended to help the production team get a handle on the music during the movie's development workshops and had no wish to actually star in the movie. She was also reluctant to sing lead on "This is Me", insisting that another actress be found and that she would just sing harmony on the song if needed. It took a lot of encouragement and cajoling on the part of director Michael Gracey and Hugh Jackman to get her to finally embrace the role of Lettie Lutz and passionately take up the project.
  • Tom Thumb was originally going to sing "This is Me" and play it on the ukelele but the creators of the movie found that it wasn't working out. Also the actor playing Tom, Sam Humphrey, was going to play him at his exact height and was going to dance with the rest of the cast, even having had dance lessons with everyone else, but the filmmakers changed their mind and decided to have Tom's height be more historically accurate, which is why he ended up performing the role on his knees and why you also hardly ever see Tom dance in the final product (ironically "This is Me" is the biggest example of that).

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