Grove City triplets share screen with Tom Hanks
GROVE CITY — Otto, Flynn and Archer Schroeffel will appear with Tom Hanks in the movie “A Man Called Otto” which will be released early next year.
That’s a pretty major achievement considering the 10-month-old triplets aren’t able to walk yet.
Their mother, Jessi Schroeffel, a Slippery Rock Area High School seventh- and eigth-grade science teacher, said they even appear in the trailer for the Sony Pictures movie which is appearing in theaters.
The three brothers don’t appear on the screen at the same time. As a testament to their acting ability, Otto, Flynn and Archer are playing the same character, a baby named Marco.
Schroeffel said a brief glimpse of one of the triplets as Marco appears around the 2:19-minute mark of the trailer.
The path from Grove City to the big screen began in February when Schroeffel said a friend sent her a link to a website requesting newborn twins or triplets for a role in a movie soon to be filmed in Pittsburgh.
“I responded to the questions, and the next day the casting agent called, and I sent a picture, Schroeffel said. “Two days later they said ‘We want your boys.’” After further discussions on just what was expected of the triplets, Schroeffel signed on — or rather signed Otto, Archer and Flynn on.
She said she found out being on a movie set wasn’t all glitz and glamour. There was a lot of waiting around and watching the same scene being filmed over and over.
Because child labor laws limit the amount of time a baby can spend on set to two hours a day, she said movie productions often use twins, or in her case, triplets, in a single role so a child can be “swapped out” for a sibling when the limit is reached.
She said at the time of filming, her boys were two months old and all looked alike.
“They all looked identical. They had the same nose, the same eyes, they were very similar, so they were able to swap them out between takes,” she said.
And because of COVID concerns, Schroeffel said only she and one triplet were allowed on set and around the actors and crew while her sister, Rachel, stayed with the other two babies.
“I needed her to accompany me on this. I didn’t feel right just letting anybody watching them, ” she said. “It was a lot of hard work. We had to get the babies changed. They had an outfit in two different scenes.” She added Rachel has been a huge help with the three boys.
They were on movie sets for two days. The first was an outdoor location at a cemetery in Sewickley in March. Her sister waited with two of the triplets in a rented house while Schroeffel and the third boy waited for his moment before the camera.
“It was funny,” she said. “I would be holding the baby, and the assistant director would say ‘OK, baby, baby on the set. Hand her the baby.’ And the actress would do her lines and hand the baby off to me.”
Schroeffel said there was some initial confusion when she mentioned Otto’s name and someone told her the movie baby’s name was Marco and Otto was Tom Hanks.
“He said ‘Tom’s never going to believe this’ and five minutes later Tom’s on the set,” she said.
It was a long day, stretching from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to shoot a scene where Hanks’ character visits his wife’s grave.
Otto, Archer and Flynn were called again in April, this time to a warehouse in Monroeville, where the interior of a home was built for the movie.
“The teacher in me thought that this would have made for a great field trip,” Schroeffel said. “They could see everything that went into it, the carpenters, making smoke to make the set look a certain way.”
The scene that day was a welcome-home baby shower where Hanks holds the baby on screen.
“Tom Hanks comes up to me face to face,” she said. “And he said, ‘In this scene I’m going to act like I don’t like to do this, and I don’t know how to hold a baby, but I do. I’m acting.'”
“That day I got to see him action. It was interesting to watch him between scenes,” she said. “You could really tell he was thinking about the scene and what it meant.”
This was actually Hanks’ second visit to Pittsburgh to film a movie. Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, said the actor filmed scenes for “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” between September 2018 and January 2019.
He made a fan of Schroeffel on his second go-round in the Steel City.
Schroeffel said Hanks was “authentic and genuine. Two little girls (on set) talked a lot about Woody and ‘Toy Story.’ I really liked how he interacted with the kids.”
“He said to me, when the boys are grown up they’re going to say, “Mom, why couldn’t you put us in a cool movie?’”
Schroeffel also got to meet Hanks’ wife, Rita Wilson, whose production company produced the movie.
She said Hanks was nice enough to record a message for her sister, a big “League of Their Own” fan saying “Rachel, there’s no crying in baseball.”
That was the end of the triplets’ involvement in the movie. Schroeffel said she’s banked their salary into an educational fund and is settling in with her husband, Michael, and 4-year-old daughter, June, to show Otto, Flynn and Archer their first Christmas.
“Now that they are taking off (crawling), it’s a handful. But they really do entertain each other. That’s a plus. They make for built-in playmates,” she said.
“A Man Called Otto” is set to premiere for a limited release in New York and Los Angeles on Christmas Day, followed by a nationwide release Jan. 13.
“A Man Called Otto” was one of seven movie or TV projects filmed in and around Pittsburgh recently, according to Keezer. The others were the second season of “American Rust,” the second season of “The Mayor of Kingstown” and the movies “The Deliverance,” “The Pale Blue Eye” (partially filmed in Butler County in 2021), “Rustin” (also partially filmed in 2021) and Ethan Coen’s untitled road comedy.
Keezer said, “They just began filming “American Rust” after Thanksgiving. We’ve got two television series and film projects interested in filming here next year.”
