Matt Damon transported himself back to the 1880s – and you might not have even noticed it!
The Oscar-winning actor, 56, made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo as an extra in the season premiere of HBO's The Gilded Age with David Letterman.
© Karolina Wojtasik/HBOThe cameos
The pair were spotted in one scene as the camera panned, walking across the street between the Van Rijn and the Russell homes in New York City in complete period get-ups.
Both wore elaborate black suits with overcoats, with David, 79, sporting a bowler hat and his own thick gray beard, while Matt wore a top hat and a thick gray mustache, plus sideburns.
As it turns out, this was a passion project spanning five decades for David, who'd wanted to be a background actor since the 1970s, and his moment finally came when he was set to have Matt, who'd worked previously as an extra, on an episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman.
How it happened
"We thought, Okay, this could be the perfect opportunity," the Netflix special's showrunner Isabel Richardson told Vulture. "It'd be really fun for Dave to do this with Academy Award–winner Matt Damon, and it tied into his origin story really well."
Matt was on board, and when they were presented with The Gilded Age as an option, he thought it was "by far the silliest, most ridiculous idea." Then came all the correspondences with the HBO period drama's EP Kate Churchill.
© Getty Images"It was a kind of hysterical moment when our production supervisor Leah Baker came up to me on set and was like, 'Well, I have a kind of funny, interesting question: Would you like Dave Letterman and Matt Damon to be background on our set one day? I just started laughing," Kate recalled to Vulture.
There were a lot of moving parts to the process, namely making sure they could fit the two into the show's set schedule, selecting a shot that would absolutely make the final cut, and doing it in such a way that their presence didn't steal focus from the plot itself. "There were a lot of emails going around, but people really locked arms, and both studios saw that it was a fun collaboration where we could help each other," Kate explained.
Matt and David's appearances
As for their looks, the Gilded Age crew decided that David's own look was perfect for the part. "Now Dave's easy, he has this fabulous beard. I called Isabel and said, 'Tell Dave not to shave,' and she was like, 'Not a problem.'"
© Getty ImagesHowever, while Matt also had a similarly "fabulous" beard at the time for The Odyssey, he'd recently shaved it all off. So the show's hair and make-up team got to work preparing period-appropriate sideburns and a mustache for him.
The entire experience proved to be a hysterical one, especially for Matt's new facial hair. "Matt Damon was laughing so hard throughout the day, and he had this mustache on, so anytime he laughed, he would have to hold on to his mustache to make sure it didn't come loose," Isabel quipped.
The Gilded Age season 4 premiered on November 1, with new episodes released every Sunday.
