A TikToker appealed to her followers to ask her who her fellow passenger was, and received 43,000 replies. TikTok: @_paigecraig, Paige Craig, Instagram: @ederbez, Eugenio Derbez
- TikToker Paige Craig asked her 1.1 million followers if they recognized a plane passenger nearby.
- The upload received over 29 million views and thousands of comments. The author was Eugenio Derbez.
- The Mexican actor caught wind of the viral moment and introduced himself.
An influencer posted a video asking viewers to help her identify a potential celebrity she spotted on a flight. In less than a day, her video blew up and caught the attention of the man in question — a Mexican actor himself implicated in the joke.
On May 12, 31-year-old TikToker Paige Craig, from Orlando, Fla., posted a video she filmed on a flight to Los Angeles with an on-screen caption asking if anyone could tell her, who was a passenger nearby, as people kept taking photos with him, but she was too scared to ask him directly.
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The video then panned to briefly show an apparently unsuspecting passenger in a nearby seat while The Who’s song “Who Are You” played in the background. “He speaks Spanish and is a very nice man,” the TikToker added in the caption as an additional note.
The upload received a whopping 29 million views and over 40,000 comments as people excitedly informed Craig that she was on a flight with actor Eugenio Derbez. In one comment with over 7,000 likes, Derbez, 61, was described as “Mexican Jim Carrey,” while others listed specific films he’d starred in, including “CODA,” which won a Best Picture Oscar in 2022.
“I thought about writing it down since I had my answer and then I wouldn’t have to risk the poor man finding out I did that if I had to sit next to him for like five more hours,” Craig said in one Interviewed by Insider Email Exchange, but said she ultimately decided to go ahead with the video to learn more from the commentary on the films he had been in.
However, so many people tagged the actor under the video that Craig felt compelled to post a comment of his own, which received over 48,300 likes, telling viewers to stop, along with a series of emojis, which are usually used to express embarrassment.
“I spent the rest of the five hours stressing that my video would show up on his phone,” she told Insider.
The actor caught wind of the online excitement
On May 13, Craig posted a follow-up video and wrote in the caption that she initially thought she got away with it because the actor didn’t notice the online hubbub. The upload, which received 1.3 million views, then featured what appeared to be an Instagram story uploaded by Derbez and tagged by Craig. (The story is currently unavailable to view on his account.)
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The footage started with the clip from the original TikTok and then cut to Derbez filming himself in a car and saying, “Hi Paige. May I introduce myself.”
He said he’s an actor and director and gave an overview of some of the characters he’d played, including a billionaire in 2018’s ‘Overboard’ and a Latin lover in 2017’s ‘How to Be a Latin Lover.’ At the End of the Referring to Craig’s original appeal, Derbez asked his followers, “Now can someone tell me who this girl is?!”
“I found his answer video hilarious,” Craig told Insider. “It was also nice to know that he wouldn’t give me a restraining order because of the spooky mood,” she joked.
To answer his question, Craig has over 1.1 million followers on TikTok, where she uploads videos from a mom’s perspective and videos with her husband, professional Supercross biker Christian Craig, and a YouTube channel with over 106,000 subscribers , on which she posts Supercross-themed vlogs.
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On May 13, Derbez also posted a photo to his 18.9 million followers on Instagram, which garnered over 100,000 likes, of him holding his phone while gazing off into the distance, with the caption, “Now I gotta look.”everywhere” and tagged Craig. The caption added, in Spanish, “Just in case someone films me.”
Derbez didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
For more stories like this, check out Insider’s Digital Culture team’s coverage here.
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