Dana Carvey confirms viral story about observing 'moment of silence' for 9/11 while dressed as Turtle Man

After years of internet speculation, Dana Carvey has confirmed the viral rumor that he "observed a moment of silence" for the September 11th attacks while dressed up as a grotesque humanoid turtle on The Master of Disguise set.

The legendary comedian, who played the film's bumbling secret agent Pistachio Disguisey, explained that he was fully dressed up as the Turtle Man — bald cap, facial prosthetics, green-shelled suit and all — when everyone was called for a group prayer. Unable to remove the prosthetics in a short amount of time, Carvey participated in the solemn moment while wearing his character's outrageous makeup.

"It's kind of a sensitive topic, but after 9/11 I was shooting a movie called Master of Disguise," Carvey said on Wednesday's episode of the Fly on the Wall podcast. "We took an appropriate time off and went back to shooting and I was playing — if you've seen the movie, kids — the Turtle Man, with a bald cap and a weird thing on my lip and a big green shell outfit."

After surfacing in the trivia section of The Master of Disguise's IMDB page, the supposed incident circulated for years on social media. Referencing a tweet about the rumor, co-host David Spade asked Carvey to clarify whether he was "shooting actively" on the morning of the terrorist attack and if he first heard the news while dressed "in your turtle outfit."

"What happened was they obfuscated it," Carvey replied. "I was in [the costume] all that day and then they said, 'We're going to have a group prayer about 9/11.' And I couldn't get the thing — I would've held everyone for a half hour getting all that prosthetic makeup off — so, as I remember it, everyone else was [wearing] civilian clothes, I'm dressed as the Turtle Man, with a bald head, and I'm holding hands and I'm lowering my head and praying and I just thought at the moment: 'This is very strange.'"

"It's very ridiculous," Spade agreed, adding that it was absurd that someone "would even repeat that dumb story." Then, he added, "Did you have the shell on or off?"

"They might've gotten the shell off, but they didn't get the turtle head or the turtle lip off," Carvey said. "They couldn't get it all off."

But, as Carvey put it, "If it's outrageous, it's…" Spade supplied, "Contagious."

Everett Collection Dana Carvey as the Turtle Man in 'Master of Disguise'

Master of Disguise director Perry Andelin Blake previously told Defector that the film didn't resume shooting until around two weeks after the events of September 11th. After giving a short speech, he initiated a moment of silence.

"I'm the director, so I'm the leader of this group of people. I felt it was a little weird to be making this funny, silly kids' movie in the wake of this huge national tragedy," Blake recalled in 2021. "So I felt like I needed to say something. I gave a little speech, I guess you would call it."

Blake then paraphrased his speech for the outlet: "It seems weird that we're starting to work on this movie, but I think if there's some time that we maybe need a bit of humor in our society and in our country — and especially for the kids of our country, this is probably such a hard time for them — there's something good about us coming together to make a movie that can make kids laugh and bring a little bit of happiness. So let's try to do that."

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