‘Wizards Of Waverly Place’ Creator: Selena Gomez, Jennifer Stone Invented Hat Dance

“Wizards of Waverly Place” turns 10 years old on Thursday, but there’s still so much about the Disney Channel hit series that fans don’t know.

Yes, it was about teenage wizards. Yes, it was set in New York City. Yes, it starred Selena Gomez, David Henrie, Jake T. Austin, Jennifer Stone, David DeLuise and Maria Canals-Barrera. But what about everything that happened behind-the-scenes to work to create the series that we all enjoyed for years?

For example, how did that crazy, funky, junky hat song and dance that Alex (Gomez) and Harper (Stone), and sometimes Alex’s mom, Theresa (Canals-Barrera), would perform every time they saw a hat of sorts come about?

For those that need a little bit of a refresher of the crazy, funky hat song, that we start to hear in the show’s fourth episode, it went like this:

“What’s that? A hat? Crazy, funky, junky hat. Overslept, hair unsightly. Trying to look like Keira Knightley. We’ve been there, we’ve done that, we see right through your funky hat.”

The words are fun and the tune is catchy, but it’s the addition of the dance that brings it all together to create something that fans can’t help but remember and love 10 years later.

It turns out, there was quite a bit that went into creating the whole song-and-dance show, according to series creator Todd Greenwald. In honor of the show’s 10^th anniversary on Thursday, International Business Times spoke with him to get the intimate details of developing such an honored show and one of the things discussed was the creation of this iconic song.

“It was to highlight a Harper and Alex bonding moment, to show that they had some history together,” Greenwald said of the song, which acts as a different form of a secret handshake between friends. “It came out of the writers’ room, but where it really came to life was when Jennifer and Selena gave it the dance.”

Yes, you read that right. That dance that you surely know and obviously love was created by none other than the stars, Gomez and Stone, themselves. No wonder it’s so unique and actually looks like something best friends would come up with and perform together.

“We didn’t write the dance,” Greenwald continued. “The words came out of the writers’ room, but it really came to life once it hit the stage and Selena and Jennifer got a hold of it.”

He joked that he wants fans to stop imagining “all of these writers in a room doing this weird dance” because it was not like that at all. To put it simply: “It was just a collaboration of a silly line of words, brought to life during run-through by Jennifer and Selena. They gave it the life.”

And give it life they did, as fans everywhere learned and loved the song and dance. Something that the series creator said was never the plan, but that he’s nonetheless happy about the outcome.

“You don’t write that stuff with the intent of it being taken that way,” he said. “But it’s always great to see that.”

Major props to Gomez and Stone for creating an iconic dance, but also major props to the writers for producing such a fun song, even if Greenwald isn’t able to recall exactly which hat moment of Keira Knightley’s inspired her part of the tune.

Let’s just go with all of them. As every hat of Knightley’s is amazing because it’s less about the hat and more about how she wears them – from her hat in “Love Actually” to the pirate’s hat in “Pirates of the Caribbean” to the ones she wears out of character.

What Greenwald does know is that it “would be pretty cool” to hear Knightley herself sing the crazy, funky, junky hat song. It’s safe to say that fans around the world would agree with that statement.

Stay tuned to International Business Times for more “Wizards of Waverly Place” trivia and behind-the-scenes stories from creator Todd Greenwald.