Bobby Moynihan Personally Asked Ted Danson About the ‘Three Men and a Baby’ Ghost

1987’s Three Men and a Baby found Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg and Tom Selleck teaming up to look after an abandoned infant. It was a massive box-office hit because apparently the mere suggestion that three dudes could attempt to care for a child was funny as shit in the ‘80s.

For many people, the oddest thing about Three Men and a Baby is the fact that this adorable premise is predicated on a heroin trafficking subplot. For others, they’re far more obsessed with the theory that Three Men and a Baby is the one movie that somehow pierces the veil separating our world from the eternal mystery of the afterlife. 

Famously, there’s an urban legend that the ghost of a small child, who died in the apartment where the movie was shot, can be seen lurking in the background of one scene.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, this claim has been largely debunked. For one thing, the movie wasn’t shot in an actual residence, it was filmed on a soundstage in Toronto where, as far as we know, no minors tragically died. Also, it seems pretty clear that the ghost is really a cardboard cut-out of Danson’s character from a deleted scene, right? Right???

Amateur Ghostbuster Jimmy Fallon once asked Tom Selleck about the apparent paranormal phenomenon during an interview on The Tonight Show. Selleck laughed off the rumors, noting the ghost was huge for “video sales” and speculating that “maybe Disney made it up.” When Fallon brought up the deleted scene, he held up a shot of Danson’s cut-out side-by-side with the ghost boy — it wasn’t so convincing.

Well, former Saturday Night Live cast member Bobby Moynihan once attempted to get to the bottom of it. The “Drunk Uncle” performer co-starred with Danson in the short-lived Tina Fey-created NBC comedy Mr. Mayor.

On a recent episode of the podcast Doug Loves Movies, Moynihan revealed that he had once excitedly “asked Ted Danson, personally, about the ghost,” adding that he “asked him within 17 seconds of meeting him.” Danson’s answer was a tad anticlimactic. “He was just like, ‘It was a cardboard cut-out of me,’” Moynihan recalled.

Why did the cut-out look so different from the mysterious figure that people have been obsessing over for decades? Well, Danson once cleared up the confusion, not to Moynihan, but in a 2024 episode of his podcast Where Everybody Knows Your Name, with guest Selleck.

Danson itted that the footage is “a little spooky” but noted that the original plan for his actor character involved him having, not one, but several life-sized cut-outs of himself from his various commercials over the years. “And there was one that was about, you know, six, seven-year-old boy size," the Cheers star explained. 

So there you have it: There was no ghost, which means that the only truly cursed Steve Guttenberg movie is Police Academy.