Photo: Courtesy of LWYang Flickr.
Zachary Levi, god bless him, is out spreading some fowl rumors.
In a segment on Conan, Levi talked about his undying love for the studio and Disneyland, and some "insider info" that doesn't quite check out.
Levi, who was there to promote his new Disney Channel show, Tangled: The Series, told host Conan O'Brien that growing up in Ventura, CA, he'd go to Disneyland often.
"I grew up in the '80s so we had the Disney channel and all of the vaults and the cartoons and stuff," he explained.
It was a little too convenient for O'Brien, who accused Levi of having to say those things because he's on Disney's payroll. But no, he insisted, "I'm not biased at all."
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Then, things got a little strange. Levi explained that he goes to Disneyland often with his family. It's a "perk" of being a Disney employee, he said. Another perk? He's learned some behind-the-scenes knowledge, adding that the turkey legs — one of the park's fine culinary delights — are not actually turkey. They're emu.
Yes, Levi swears that the reason that those turkey legs are so big is because they come from flightless Australian birds, not the fowl that graces Thanksgiving tables.
Understandably, O'Brien is skeptical. "Shocker, right?" Levi says. They're eating it up! After all, he's a Disney aficionado, right?
"I have friends that have worked at Disneyland," Levi continues, "and I was talking about how the turkey legs taste more like ham than they taste like turkey, which is already befuddling. And they said, 'Well, they're actually emu.'"
He added, "If you've had a turkey leg at Disneyland, you've eaten an emu, folks."
Sorry to break it to you Zachary, but according to Robert Adams, executive chef at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, those delicious smoky legs are not emu. They're seasoned turkey. "We hear that all the time," Adams told the Orlando Sentinel. "They're real turkeys. It's what they are."
Still want to live in a turkey-leg fantasyland? Emus can grow to be 5 to 6 feet tall and weigh up to 120 pounds. That would make for a very large leg. Admittedly, Disney's turkey legs are larger than life, but they're definitely not that big.
