An actor who was hand-picked by writer/director Nora Ephron to play the role of the over-eager assistant to Will Ferrell’s character in the 2005 film “Bewitched” fought back tears Wednesday as he told a jury that a physician who promised to fix a blemish in his nose instead left him with a permanent scar.
Joe Zymblosky said his worst moment came when he was visiting his family in Pennsylvania just before Christmas 2014 after the procedure was done earlier that month by Dr. Ronald Moy, a Beverly Hills dermatologist. He said he peeled back the bandages and saw a “ravine” in his nose and a “yellow, gooey mess” that caused him distress.
“I started shaking and I was about to throw up,” Zymblosky told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury hearing trial of his suit against Moy and the Moy-Fincher-Chipps Surgey Center. “I officially started panicking.”
Zymblosky said he broke the news to his mother.
“I told my mom I was petrified,” he said. “It was so much bigger than it was, it was all gooey, it had a big hole in it.”
Zymblosky said his mother’s assurances calmed him and he wrote an email to Moy, describing his nose’s appearance. Someone in Moy’s office told him to come back after the holidays and Moy assured him during his next appointment in early 2015 that the nose was healing like it should, Zymblosky said.
The actor said he was initially comforted by Moy’s words, but that he later thought things over and his anger returned.
“This is crazy, this is terrible,” Zymblosky said he told himself. “There’s no way it’s supposed to be like this.”
Zymblosky said he later sought an opinion from another doctor. He filed his lawsuit in May 2016.
In their court papers, Moy’s lawyers denied any wrongdoing on the part of their client and said Zymblosky said he was pleased with the results.
However, Zymblosky maintains he was not given a consent form to sign until after the so-called “flap revision.” He said he was reluctant to have an invasive procedure done and that he was actually happy with the outcome of a series of earlier treatments that began in early 2014. Nonetheless, Moy insisted on performing a dermabrasion — the removal of superficial layers of skin — in November 2014 and the flap revision a month later by rotating neighboring tissue to close the primary surgical defect.
“In no way will this be worse,” Zymblosky said Moy assured him.
Zymblosky, who has had mostly minor film and television roles, said he arrived in Los Angeles in 2002 with a history of acting under his belt dating back to high school. He said he hired an agent to help him get auditions. Ephron became enamored with him and wanted him in the role of the assistant to Ferrell’s character, Jack Wyatt, in the movie that also starred Nicole Kidman, Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine.
“The AD (assistant director) told me, `You must be doing something right because Nora wants you here every day that Will is here,”’ Zymblosky said.
Zymblosky said he developed a reputation for portraying “quirky” characters. He maintains the damage to his nose has hampered his ability to get roles in an industry where one’s appearance is paramount and in which high-definition cameras can detect any significant scarring.