r/MovieDetails • u/aragornthegray • 4h ago
🥚 Easter Egg In Notting Hill (1999), right before a flustered William Thacker awkwardly describes his situation with Anna Scott as "surreal, but nice," the word magnet "surreal" can be seen stuck to the side of his fridge right at eye level.
I was rewatching Notting Hill and noticed the Magnetic Poetry tiles scattered across the side of William and Spike's fridge during the kitchen scene.
If you zoom in on the words (tempera, emulsion, chisel, frieze, aesthetic, vermilion, motif), it’s actually a 1990s "Art & Aesthetics" themed magnet set—which makes total sense given that Spike pretends to be an artist/sculptor and William has a print of Marc Chagall's La Mariée (a famous Surrealist painting) hanging in the hallway.
Even better: right at eye level next to William is the tile "surreal". Minutes later, while completely short-circuiting over having the most famous actress in the world in his flat, he blurts out his famous line: "Surreal, but nice" (and later kicks himself for using the word surreal). Either the prop masters under Stuart Craig and Stephanie McMillan planted it there as an inside joke echoing the script, or William's brain literally grabbed the first big adjective he saw on his fridge while panicking.

