Andrew Garfield showed up at The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and cheekily paid a fashion homage to the wacky carousel horse that upstaged him and Florence Pugh in the poster for their new rom-com.
In August, a promotional first look of We Live in Time featured an image of the starring actors getting cuddly riding a carousel.
But the real star of the movie poster was a horse in the foreground poised to stirrup trouble.
The deranged-looking yellow horse head upstaging Garfield and Pugh became an instant viral meme. If the photobombing crazy horse was intentional, it was a genius marketing ploy as the movie created much hee haw online.
If the advance image wasn't meant to generate buzz that way, that horse has already left the gate.
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It became an equine sensation and really put the "mare" in nightmare.
With the movie just two weeks shy of its October 18 premiere, Garfield has been busy doing press for We Live in Time.
The Film Updates account on X (formerly Twitter) did a double take at images of Garfield arriving at The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on October 2 with a small detail on the upper-left side of his denim jacket.
It looked like the Tick, Tick... Boom! star took ownership of the four-legged scene-stealer from the We Live in Time promo shot.
Here's a close-up.
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Social media users know who the real star of the movie is.
It's the horse, of course.
There's even a demand for the jacket.
Garfield and Pugh recently sat down with the film's director, John Crowley, to discuss the viral meme and joked that the horse is "too busy" to come to the film's premiere.
On the Late Show, Colbert asked what the deal was with the "demon carousel horse," which led Garfield to do a facepalm.
Laughing, Garfield explained:
"All I can say is…I was about to head into a retreat, a 6-day retreat in Northern California where I would put my phone away and do all these things.
"I was doom-scrolling as you do before I entered this retreat. And I see this image and I think 'Maybe I'm the only one that will notice this insane horse.' "
"It feels like we're in his poster, in a way," he said.
He then recalled having access to his phone again after the 6-day retreat and noticing that Colbert had been talking about the "insane horse."
Garfield jokingly entertained the idea of making a documentary on how the oversight process for the film's first look fell apart after the horse memes went viral.
Here's a snippet from the interview.
We Live in Time follows the relationship of a couple played by Garfield and Pugh, two strangers whose paths collide in a car accident.
They meet for the first time in a hospital room, which later sparks a romantic relationship, and they build a life together.
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