When you stop and think about it, film production sets are like little villages at work, with entire teams dedicated to things as “small” as wardrobe, props or even just air conditioning. So it probably shouldn’t be surprising that oftentimes things might not go smoothly and the offscreen drama can be as intense as what’s on screen.
We’ve gathered some of the most interesting and possibly gross behind the scenes stories from the sets of your favorite films and TV shows. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share any you know of that might not have been mentioned here.
#1 The Paperboy
Zac Efron actually got peed on by Nicole Kidman when filming the jellyfish scene in The Paperboy. Lee Daniels, the director, told Vulture, "We just went for it and never thought twice about it, because it made sense for the film. It was what it was. I think that I became more nervous about it in the edit room, and I thought, I'm not actually going to show this, right? Is it vulgar? And I called Nicole and said, 'I don't know,' and she said, 'Lee, you made me pee on Zac Efron. If you don't put it in the movie, you need to man up.' And I was like, 'All right, I ain't gonna pu**y out! Okay.'"
Image credits: Millennium Films
#2 Elf
When filming the famous breakfast spaghetti scene in Elf, Will Ferrell, who played Buddy, puked the first time he tried the pasta-candy mash-up. Screen Rant revealed he had to shoot the scene twice and developed a migraine due to all the sugar he ate.
Image credits: New Line Cinema
#3 Chinatown
Director Roman Polanski was an absolute pain for actress Faye Dunaway to work with on the set of Chinatown—he wouldn’t even let her go to the bathroom in between takes. As a result, out of sheer desperation, Dunaway had to pee in a cup. Furious at the director’s actions, she hurled the cup of pee in his face.
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#4 Friends
In an unusual twist of fate, Matt LeBlanc swallowed some trifle, which was actually whipped cream and a couple of bananas, that David Schwimmer had spat out while filming a take of the Friends episode "The One Where Ross Got High.” LeBlanc said on The Graham Norton Show, "There was too much on his plate. So he starts to eat it all, and he starts laughing, and we cut. We're cutting, and he spits it back on his plate. I'm sitting right next to him, and I'm looking the other way. I didn't see him spit it back on his plate. So, I take his plate...and I scrape some on my plate... We go again, and now I'm eating it. We finish the take. No one says anything to me."
Image credits: Max
#5 Now You See Me
In the notorious water tank escape scene in Now You See Me, Isla Fisher was trapped underwater during the three-minute segment when she couldn’t get her release chain out of her outfit. What everyone thought was just great acting was her genuinely drowning. "I was actually drowning," she remarked to Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately. "Everyone thought I was acting fabulously. ... no one realized I was actually struggling."
Image credits: Summit Entertainment
#6 Euphoria
The Euphoria Season 2 hot tub scene, where Cassie appeared to be projectile vomiting all over the place, was a combination of CGI and practical effects. Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie in the show, revealed to Hot Ones, "They had to get a pump, and they had this pipe that they just taped and hid on my body. And then they CGI'd it out up my neck, and then there was a horse bit that I had to put in my mouth. So during that scene, they’re filling my mouth with throw up. And then I opened my mouth, and it just started shooting out my mouth.” It was the most disgusting thing I ever experienced."
Image credits: Max
#7 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
For the final family dinner scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, directors set the table with actual rotting animal carcasses. Shooting went on for 26 hours in sweltering heat, with many on set having to flee for air in between takes. Makeup artist, Dorothy Pearl, was responsible for injecting formaldehyde into the food to slow down the rotting process. To Telegraph, Pearl revealed, "That meat was old, it was rotten, it was putrid, it was terrible. But I believe that the dire circumstances added to the film. If we’d been comfy, if everybody had their own trailer, I'm not so sure you'd feel the horror in quite the way you do. None of us were happy. We were miserable."
Image credits: Bryanston Distributing Company
#8 The Office
When filming kissing scenes in The Office, actress Angela Kinsey said her on-camera love interest Rainn Wilson, "was usually eating something disgusting right beforehand." On an episode of her podcast Office Ladies, Kinsey said, "And I'd be like, 'Rainn, dang it. Do you have to eat a tuna fish sandwich right before we're supposed to kiss? Come on!'"
Image credits: NBC
#9 Poltergeist
When filming the scene in Poltergeist, where her character, Diane, falls into an excavated pool, Actress JoBeth Williams thought she was swimming with a bunch of fake skeletons. She discovered that they were actually real skeletons years later. She admitted to Vanity Fair, "I always assumed that the skeletons were made by the prop department. A few years later, I ran into one of the special effects guys, and I said, 'You guys making all those skeletons, that must have been really amazing.' He said, 'Oh, we didn't make them, those were real.' I said, 'What?' He said, 'Yeah, they were real skeletons…”
Image credits: Warner Bros. Entertainment
#10 Vampire's Kiss
When filming Vampire's Kiss, Nicolas Cage said to director Robert Bierman, "The thing I hate most in the world are cockroaches. They are my Room 101… So let me eat a cockroach." Bierman happily obliged, and Cage was given a cockroach to crunch onscreen. Bierman informed the Ringer, "He wanted to eat the most frightening thing for him." Cage remarked, "I really [wanted] to do something that would shock the audience, something you would never forget."
To make sure Cage wouldn’t fall ill, a doctor was consulted at the request of the producer Barbara Zitwer. The doctor said, "No. But have him drink some whiskey right after." So Cage, who shot the scene in two takes, actually swallowed the two cockroaches and rinsed his mouth out with 100-proof vodka after. Barry Shils, the co-producer, fibbed to an animal rights group when he told them no cockroaches were harmed during filming.
Image credits: Herndale Film Corporation
#11 Rescue Dawn
In the stomach-turning maggots scene in Rescue Dawn, where the prisoners were fed worms, Christian Bale actually ate real maggots. Bale informed Collider, "They were very real. I didn't mind eating the maggots, but I just wanted to make sure about where the maggots had come from. Where did they find those maggots?"
Image credits: MGM
#12 Matilda
One simply cannot mention chocolate cake without thinking of the famous cake scene involving Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda. Jim Karz, the actor who portrayed Bruce told Newsweek, "There were a ton of cakes. They had a factory, like, pumping out the cakes… I don't know how much I ate. It was definitely a lot." The film's cinematographer, Stefan Czapsky added, "What was ironic about it was, the actor who played Bruce? He didn't like chocolate cake. They had a spit bucket for him. It worked for the scene because it was kind of like a child torture scene — to force him to eat chocolate cake."
Image credits: Sony Pictures
#13 The Wolf Of Wall Street
In the CPR scene in The Wolf of Wall Street, where Jordan saves Donnie from choking to death, lube was used to get the projectile of ham from Jonah Hill’s mouth to stick to Leonardo DiCaprio’s face. DiCaprio revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, "We were doing this CPR sequence, and, you know, the big challenge that day, we had to do 70 takes because they couldn't get this ham to stick on my face. And they had to put K-Y Jelly, and there's literally a guy there behind this giant window with a plastic spoon just flicking ham on my face all day long as I'm doing this insane sequence."
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#14 The Princess Bride
Decades later, Cary Elwes still recalls the gigantic fart that his co-star in The Princess Bride, André the Giant, let out on set while filming the castle storming scene. Elwes told Live with Kelly and Ryan, "André goes, 'I guess not very long'... and he lets out the most monumental fart. I mean, no, for real, like, insane, like, deafening. We all still have tinnitus in one ear. The whole plywood set was shaking, and the sound guy lifted his headphones off his ears and like was [shaking his head]. And it went on for—somebody timed it! It was 16 seconds!"
Image credits: 20th Century Fox
#15 Psycho
The 1960s film Psycho was the first to violate the Hays Code, according to the Toronto Star. It went against the censorship guidelines for films by being the first to portray a flushing toilet onscreen.
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#16 Batman Returns
Thanks to sushi, the thought of eating raw fish doesn’t usually repulse people. However, in Batman Returns, Danny DeVito had to eat a raw bluefish and was particularly grossed out by the fact that "in the middle of the action, [he] would squeeze a mixture of mouthwash and spirulina into [his] mouth." He revealed to the Daily Telegraph, "But that was because I needed to ooze this green, kind of black, thickish liquid out of the corners."
Image credits: Warner Bros
#17 Rosemary's Baby
In her memoir, What Falls Away, Mia Farrow looked back on the infamous raw liver scene in Rosemary’s Baby. She penned, "When Roman [Polanski, the director] wanted me to eat raw liver, I ate it, take after take, even though, at the time, I was a committed vegetarian."
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#18 Django Unchained
We all recall the notorious dinner table scene in Django Unchained where Calvin J. Candie, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, goes into a fit of rage and smashes a glass, which causes his hand to start bleeding everywhere. What we didn’t know was that all that bleeding was genuine. DiCaprio told The Hollywood Reporter, "Maybe they thought it was done with special effects. I wanted to keep going. It was more interesting to watch [director Quentin Tarantino's and co-star Jamie Foxx's] reaction off-camera than to look at my hand. We did it bloodied and bandaged for the rest of the movie. I'm glad Quentin kept it in."
Image credits: The Weinstein Company
#19 Star Wars: A New Hope
Mark Hamil recalled the blue milk he drank while filming Star Wars: A New Hope. Comparing it to the version sold in Disney Parks, Hamil remarked to a fan on Twitter, “Honestly though: the warm, oily, sickly-sweet milk dyed blue from the movie was gag-inducing [puke-emoji]-while this frosty non-dairy drink tasted like a yummy fruit smoothie.”
Image credits: Lucasfilm
#20 The Birds
The Birds was dubbed one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The director of the film, Alfred Hitchcock, took filming so seriously that in the last scene where Tippi Hedren was swarmed by flocks of birds, he insisted real birds be used instead of fake ones.
Image credits: Universal Pictures
#21 Candyman
In the skin-crawling bee scene in Candyman, actor Tony Todd had live bees put in his mouth during filming. Having suffered at least 20 stings as a result, Todd revealed to the Guardian, "I negotiated a bonus of $1,000 for every sting during the bee scene. And I got stung 23 times. Everything that's worth making has to involve some sort of pain. Once I realized it was an important part of who Candyman was, I embraced it. It was like putting on a beautiful coat.”
Image credits: TriStar Pictures
#22 American Pie
Stifler actually drank egg whites in the infamous “pale ale” scene in American Pie. Seann William Scott, who plays the character, revealed on DVD Talk, "I really tried not to think about what it was supposed to be. Every time we did [a] take, I just drank it and pretended it was beer."
Image credits: Universal Pictures
#23 Game Of Thrones
The horse heart Daenerys, played by Emilia Clarke, had to eat in the first season of the show was actually a “gummy bear” heart, made out of solidified jam. During filming, she had to eat 28 portions of what she said tasted like “bleach and raw pasta.” Clarke told The Mirror, "It was very helpful to be given something so truly disgusting to eat, so there wasn’t much acting required..." Due to being drenched in gallons of sticky fake blood, Clarke was constantly sticking to things during filming. When on Jimmy Kimmel Live, she stated, "I was kind of covered head to toe in the fake blood. And I'm kind of continually sticking myself, to myself or to other things."
Image credits: Max
#24 The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
When Andy Serkis morphed into a Gollum in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the fish he chomped on in that scene was entirely made up of gelatin. He told TheOneRing.net, "They made a few gelatin models which I had to bite into...I would rather have eaten a raw fish."
Image credits: New Line Cinema
#25 Apocalypse Now
As reported by The Independent, on the set of Apocalypse Now, the temple was littered with smelly trash and dead rats. Martin Sheen's wife, Janet, complained to Gray Frederickson, the producer, "You've got to clean this up. It's a health risk. I won't allow Marty to work here." Frederickson relayed the complaint to the prop department, to which they jokingly replied, “Wait till he hears about the dead bodies.”
Image credits: United Artists
#26 Game Of Thrones
In a 2018 interview with Esquire, English actor Charles Dance, who portrayed Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones, spoke about his character’s infamous deer skinning scene. He said, “I learned how to skin a deer. I skinned a deer quite well actually. They came to me one day and said 'Charles, are you a vegetarian?' I said, 'No, of course not.' So they got this butcher chap to show me how to skin a whole deer and then I did it, and I did it well... I think. I was hoping for a nice haunch of venison from it, but they didn't even let me keep a hoof!”
Image credits: Max
#27 Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom
Kate Capshaw was absolutely terrified on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom due to the fact that she had to have tons of bugs poured all over her in one scene. So much so, she had to take a calming tablet before filming. Interviewed for a behind-the-scenes featurette, she expressed, "I was really asking people. 'Is there a pill? There must be something I can take to keep myself from freaking out.' Because I don't want everyone to look at the movie going, 'She's on drugs!"
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#28 Suicide Squad
The chemical bath scene between Harley Quinn and Joker was one of many thrilling scenes in the film Suicide Squad. Margot Robbie, who played Harley Quinn, mentioned to the Washington Post, "That chemical [scene] was the most unpleasant thing I've ever done in my entire life. So that was definitely my least favorite. It was, like, this gluggy paint stuff that was so far in my ears and up my nose, and I was choking on it underwater, and I couldn't breathe, and I tried to open my eyes, and it would glaze over my eyeballs, and I could only see white. It was horrible."
Image credits: Warner Bros
#29 Yellowjackets
Eating human flesh made out of some jackfruit and dried rice paper sounds strange, but this is what the actors had to do when filming the cannibal scene in the second season of Yellowjackets. The whole scene was so gross that Sammi Hanratty puked on set. Sophie Nélisse, who played teen Shauna in the series, told BuzzFeed News, "We were pulling out the rice paper, and it was all soggy. We were like, 'This is the grossest thing ever.' It just tasted disgusting." Courtney Eaton suggested, "They should have sprayed some hamburger smell or something."
Image credits: Showtime
#30 The Walking Dead
IronE Singleton, who played T-Dog in The Walking Dead, had a difficult time filming in the second season of the show. He was sickened by the zombie they had to fish out of the well in the scene. At the 2020 Wizard World, IronE explained, "That thing was so nasty. I was gagging because we were out in a dirt field and there was a lot of dust being kicked up after every take, and then that mixed with the fact that this zombie was so disgusting."
Image credits: AMC
#31 The Shawshank Redemption
As stated by Screen Rant, on the set of The Shawshank Redemption, the animal control inspector forbade characters Andy and Brooks from feeding a baby bird a live waxworm for the scene. The cast and crew had to wait for one of the waxworms in the bucket to die so they could film the scene.
Image credits: Columbia Pictures
#32 Interview With The Vampire
From hanging upside down for 30 minutes to constantly filming on winter nights, these grueling conditions were just the tip of the iceberg for the main cast members of Interview With The Vampire. In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Brad Pitt confessed he was miserable while filming due to being in the dark all the time on a windowless stage as well as the uncomfortable contact lenses and makeup he had to wear.
Image credits: Warner Bros.
#33 Pitch Perfect
Using a mic that was once covered in fake puke doesn’t sound like a pleasant experience. Shelley Regner, who played the role of Ashley Jones in Pitch Perfect, tweeted to fans, "Fun fact: we used [Anna Camp's] puke mic in all the performance numbers. It wasn't hard to figure out who had the puke mic by the smell."
Image credits: Universal Pictures
#34 Seven
According to director David Fincher in the Se7en commentary track, all the spaghetti shown in the Gluttony scene was the real deal, and the sauce that went with it was weeks old. When coming across it for the first time, Morgan Freeman couldn't contain his distaste for it.
Image credits: New Line Cinema
#35 The Sandlot
While beef jerky and black licorice are an unusual pairing, both were ingredients of the chewing tobacco seen in The Sandlot carnival scene. Grant Gelt, child actor who played Bertram Grover in the 1993 film, told The Arrow, "They didn't tell us about the licorice, which, looking back, I think was intended to actually make us feel nauseous." Terry Haskell, the film’s prop master and mastermind behind the tobacco, commented, "That was a real tobacco brand, and yep, the black jerky and licorice was me. I absolutely wanted them to feel revolted." The carnival ride the child actors took after the tobacco scene made a few of them feel ill. Tom Guiry, who played Scotty Smalls, remarked to TIME, "We had to go on that ride about 15 times, and I think me, Ham [played by Patrick Renna], and Chauncey [Leopardi] all threw up a few times.
Image credits: 20th Century Fox
#36 Alien: Resurrection
In Alien: Resurrection, Winona Ryder had to conquer her fear of drowning when filming the underwater scene. She showed her determination by completing scuba training before filming. But during filming, she almost drowned due to other complications on the set.
Image credits: 20th Century Fox
#37 Jungle Fever
Actress Halle Berry was truly committed to her role as Vivian in Jungle Fever, so much so, she admitted she “didn’t shower or take a bath for like two weeks.” When Berry appeared on The Rosie O’Donnel show, she remarked, "Nobody said anything to me, but everybody sort of started to keep their distance. It was an experience. That was my attempt at method acting."
Image credits: Universal Pictures
#38 Last Man On Earth
When shooting the steamy scene in the first season of The Last Man on Earth, Kristen Schaal, who played Carol, farted all over her co-star Will and blamed it on the beans she had eaten prior. Schall confessed on Late Night With Seth Meyers, "Will never breaks, and we both sort of take a lot of pride in our determination to never break. I broke that man! I farted on him, he broke, and then he tried to tell the crew it was his fart because he's such a saint. And I was like, 'No, it's mine.' Like, I own my farts."
Image credits: Fox
#39 I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!
Do spiders really pee? That’s what we all thought when Jaqueline Jossa, a Season 19 contestant on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here!, told Lorraine that a spider urinated in her mouth during the final episode. She mentioned, "It was awful. It was literally dripping in my mouth. Honestly, awful. I couldn't even speak — I wanted to be like, 'Ohh it's weeing in my mouth.”
Image credits: ITV
#40 The Mad Men
Alison Brie, who guest-starred on The Mad Men, was given underwear that resembled biker shorts, sporting a tiny hole for using the toilet. She confessed on the Life is Short podcast, "I didn't know for the first season that you weren't supposed to wear underwear under them because they are underwear...So I'm peeing and not hearing it hit the bowl, and then I just feel warmth. It was full pee... I just dabbed it with a bunch of toilet paper. Because they're waiting on me! I'm not allowed to be that person here... I'm a recurring guest star, I don't want to lose my job."
Image credits: AMC
#41 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Gunnar Hansen wore his character Leatherface’s costume throughout filming The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, without ever washing it. Making it clean was strictly prohibited even though he wore it in the blistering heat for half a day, every day. Gunnar joked in a 2000 documentary, "I was the smelliest element of the set."
Image credits: Bryanston Distributing Company
#42 The Boys
The famous whale scene in the second season of The Boys was shot inside an anatomically accurate fake whale. Laz Alonso, who played Mother’s Milk in the show, revealed to TV Guide, "Jack [Quaid] and I would get stuck to the whale guts. When we were in there shooting our scene, at the end of the scene, we would have to get up and walk out of the whale, and there were a couple of takes where we would try to get up, but our bodies, literally our skin, were stuck to the whale because the sugar-coated red stuff would dry up during the scene."
Image credits: Amazon Prime Video
#43 Fury
The cast of David Ayer’s WWII film Fury gave their all to the depiction of the 2nd Armored Division. From eating and sleeping, to fighting each other, they did everything inside the tank as part of a four-month boot camp. Brad Pitt recalled, “It was set up to break us down, to keep us cold, to keep us exhausted, to make us miserable, to keep us wet, make us eat cold food. And if our stuff wasn’t together we had to pay for it with physical forfeits.”
Buy Now: Columbia Pictures
#44 Triangle Of Sadness
Filming the “Captain’s Dinner” scene in Triangle of Sadness was so intricate and time-consuming, the crew had to plan it two years in advance. The SFX crew needed several days to pump fake vomit through the vomit tubes attached to the actors’ faces.
Image credits: Lionsgate
#45 Team America: World Police
In Team America: World Police, the team had to come up with a way to make a puppet vomit. Eric Jewett, first assistant director for the film, informed the Independent, "It made a lot of people nauseous. We connected a 50-gallon drum of viscous, beige fluid to the puppet's head with a tube, and the special effects guys started pumping. Gallon after gallon of vomit spewed out of Gary's mouth, then stopped, and then started again. Puke went everywhere. It ran off the set onto the floor and under our shoes. Trey [Parker] and Matt [Stone] demonstrated their mastery of comedic timing with the stopping and starting, and it was hilarious. But people had to leave the room."
Image credits: Paramount Pictures
#46 Oldboy
According to Screen Rant, despite being a vegetarian, Choi Min-sik, who played the role of Oh Dae-su, had to stomach a live octopus for a scene in Oldboy. It is reported that he ate four of them while filming.
Image credits: Show East
#47 Night Of The Living Dead
The “human remains” for the zombie feast scene in the Night of the Living Dead film were made of chocolate syrup, ham, and sheep offal. Interestingly, many of the zombies filmed in the scene were crew members, spectators, and even the film’s investors. John A. Russo, writer and investor of the film, told Newsweek, "Our commercial clients surprised us, because they were straight up-and-down, suit-and-tie people, I mean, they were ultra-conservative. But some of the ad agent presidents were the ones biting into those animal parts."
Image credits: Continental Distributing
#48 Carrie
Sissy Spacek, who starred in the film Carrie, wanted her prom scene to be so perfect, she wore her bloody dress to sleep for three days to ensure it looked consistent throughout filming. In her commitment to perfection, she even slept in her trailer behind MGM Studios. P.J. Soles, her co-star, told Vulture, "I was like, 'You're amazing that you would wanna sleep in that sticky, icky stuff.' And she was like, 'No, it's gotta match, I want it to look great.'"
Image credits: United Artists
#49 Bachelor In Paradise
Wells Adams, the fan favorite Bartender on the reality show Bachelor in Paradise, revealed to TV Line, "This is something that people don't realize: All of those day beds that everyone goes and, like, sits on and stuff? Those get wet and then inevitably get moldy-smelling. By the end of the season, those daybeds are nasty. If you've gotten to the end there, and you're about to get engaged, uh, you're avoiding those."
Image credits: Hulu
