Actor David Krumholtz Reveals He Saved 150 Kids From a Fire on the ‘Santa Clause 2’ Set

While Santa is the one who travels to every house in the world in a single night, sometimes it’s his elves who save the day.

At least, that was the case on The Santa Clause 2 set.

David Krumholtz, the actor who played Bernard the Elf in the first two films, told Entertainment Weekly on Wednesday, February 21, that he sprang to action on the set of the second movie to stop a fire from spreading.

The blaze started when a piece of lighting equipment caught fire on the two-story set and began to spread. Krumholtz, 45, explained that "one of the gels in the light had overheated.”

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It seems that when the fire started, some of the children on set — Krumholtz says there were 150 — noticed it first.

“The crew is setting up the next shot. And I happen to catch out of the corner of my eye a bunch of little kids, like 7-year-olds, gathering around smoke on the second level," he said. "And I'm like, ‘What the f–k is going on up there?’ And they're just looking at it like, ‘Whoa,’ and pointing to it.”

Krumholtz said he reacted calmly in an effort to not alarm the children. Once he got the group to safety, he “slowly, calmly just walked down and said, ‘The set’s on fire. There's a fire. It's not just smoke, there's a fire.’”

The actor found himself on the nice list the next day, arriving at his trailer to find a bottle of champagne left by the producers along with a note thanking him for saving the day.

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Though Krumholtz wasn’t drinking at the time, he appreciated the gesture. All these years later, however, he thinks saving 150 children might warrant a little more thanks.

“I mean, I should have gotten money,” he joked. “You know what I mean? Substantial money.”

It’s tough to argue with that, but Krumholtz instead had to settle for the bottle and a welcome return to his role in the 2022 Disney+ series The Santa Clauses. Krumholtz embraced the moment, even if it took him a while to warm up to his character again after the original two films.

"For the longest time, my ego wouldn’t allow me to be associated with the character,” he told Time in 2022. “I’ll admit I resented [The Santa Clause] for a good portion of my 20s and 30s, but only having recently had children myself, I thought, ‘There’s something sort of worth emulating about Bernard,’" he said. "I wish I could be Bernard in a way."