Not every mega budget blockbuster is obligated to feature surprise cameos, but an increasing number of them love an unexpected A-lister. Whether it’s a friend of the cast and/or crew, a future guest star being teased for potential sequels or an Easter Egg nodding to the past or future of a franchise, it’s become a regular practice in Hollywood.
We can now add Rawson Marshall Thurber’s Netflix spectacular Red Notice to the list, which features one of the year’s most bizarre and self-referential cameos. Right before the end of the movie, Ed Sheeran randomly appears as himself playing at a wedding in Egypt, before he tries to attack people with his guitar and mocks his polarizing Game of Thrones cameo while being carted away by security.
It’s weird as hell, especially when you hear the mild-mannered musician bellowing “I’m Ed Sheeran, bitch!”, and the internet was losing its mind at Red Notice‘s completely unexpected shocker.
Sheeran should definitely stick to his day job because he can barely even play himself convincingly, and it’s incredibly jarring to see him show up as himself in a $200 million blockbuster that held a tenuous grip to any sense of grounded reality throughout. As it turns out, writer/director Thurber had always planned on his Red Notice appearance since the earliest drafts of the script, but that doesn’t make it any less strange.