When you think of a TV set, it’s often the image of elaborate costumes, shiny reflectors, and impeccable makeup that comes to mind. However, the reality of acting isn’t always glamorous.
There have been multiple times when celebrities struggled to film their scenes, either because they were disgusted by repulsive creatures on set or simply because they were asked to chew on a nausea-inducing dish.
During most extreme cases, actors have been unable to follow director’s instructions as a result of their disgusted state.
From eating regurgitated food to crying at the sight of monsters, Bored Panda takes a look at 13 repulsive behind-the-scenes moments from everyone’s favorite TV shows.
#1 Angela Kinsey Could Taste Rainn Wilson’s Kiss Forever
On her Office Ladies podcast, The Office actress Angela Kinsey admitted that she didn’t quite enjoy kissing her on-screen boyfriend, Rainn Wilson.
The actor, she said, was usually eating something disgusting right beforehand, and his eating habits made the smooches “difficult.”
"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
#2 Kristen Schaal Spills The Beans About Farting On The Last Man On Earth
We don’t have to think too hard to figure out why making a performer eat beans while shooting a show isn’t a bright idea. Unfortunately, actress Kristen Schaal experienced the consequences of this gas-inducing meal while filming in bed with co-star Will Forte.
While the first season of The Last Man on Earth was in production, they filmed a scene where Carol eats beans in bed after her love scene with Phil.
After a bit of an internal struggle, Schaal told Forte, "I'm gonna fart on you," and she did.
"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," the 46-year-old star said on Late Night with Seth Myers.
"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
#3 Emilia Clarke’ Brave Heart On Game Of Thrones
Emilia Clarke didn’t have to work hard on her performance when she was asked to choke down a “stallion heart” during the first season of Game of Thrones.
While she may have escaped the gruesome animal organ, the menu still wasn’t that appetizing for the Queen of Dragons. As it turns out, the fake heart was made out of solidified jam that “tasted like bleach and raw pasta.”
The 37-year-old actress also revealed that she had to devour “roughly 28 hearts” to get the scene right.
“Fortunately, they gave me a spit bucket because I was vomiting in it quite often,” she said.
Executive producer D.B. Weiss explained: “It really needed to provide some visible resistance when she bites into it.”
“We settled on the same [mixture that] gelatin gummy bears are made of, and it worked wonderfully — right up until the moment Emilia almost threw up."
By the time she finished the scene, she was covered in so much sticky fake blood that she got stuck to the toilet seat between breaks.
Image credits: HBO
#4 The Boys Meet The Whale
For the second season of the superhero show The Boys, showrunners said no to the famous green screen and decided that the actors film inside a 50-foot animatronic whale.
Unfortunately, it was "90 degrees outside and 120 degrees inside the whale," Laz Alonso, who plays Mother's Milk, recalled.
“I just asked, 'Where's the AC? When are you guys gonna turn the AC on?'"
The air conditioner never arrived, leading the stars to experience a sweltering, sticky day on set.
"I looked over at Laz, and he's progressively getting more and more agitated," Karl Urban, who plays Billy Butcher, described.
"The blood, of course, was attracting all sorts of insects."
“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
#5 The One Where Matt Leblanc Ate Regurgitated Food On Friends
While filming the Friends episode "The One Where Ross Got High," Matt LeBlanc accidentally ate some of David Schwimmer's regurgitated bananas and whipped cream.
"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,” LeBlanc, who played Joey Tribbiani, recalled on the Graham Norton Show about the dish, introduced on the show as Rachel’s English trifle.
“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.”
Not a single person at the studio warned poor Matt that the creamy trifle contained a disgusting ingredient from his co-star.
Image credits: NBC
#6 Millie Bobby Brown Cried Seeing Vecna On Stranger Things
The fourth season of Stranger Things included several brutal murders at the hands of the psychic serial killer Vecna. In each of the killings, the victim was lifted into the air, had all of their limbs broken, and then had their eyes pop inside their skull.
Not only were these scenes hard to watch, but the image of Vecna himself— a hulking, noseless monstrosity with deformed claws and tendrils— had viewers looking away from their screens.
Even Millie Bobby Brown, the show’s Eleven, couldn’t handle the sight of the deformed murderer.
"I walked up to her [as Vecna], and she burst into tears," Jamie Campbell Bower, the actor behind the beast, said of his co-star. “She wouldn't look at me, and she was visibly just disgusted by the whole thing."
Image credits: Netflix
#7 The Moment That Made Lauren Cohan’s Stomach Turn On The Walking Dead
The American-British actress, who plays Maggie Greene on the AMC post-apocalyptic show The Walking Dead, almost quit at the beginning after vomiting on set.
The 42-year-old star revealed that killing all those terrifying zombies wasn’t as nauseating as filming the scene where Maggie gives Lori Grimes a C-section, welcoming Judith into the world.
“I remember after we shot that scene, I threw up; I was so uncomfortable.”
She added: “It was so — within the story, so necessary. And it was so…impactful on the characters and on the viewer. And just the rawness of it, and the realness of it.”
Image credits: AMC
#8 The Well Scene From The Walking Dead Made Irone Singleton Feel Queasy
A walker from the second season of AMC’s The Walking Dead was so revolting that it made IronE Singleton, also known as T. Dog, gag on set.
The zombie had fallen into Hershel Greene's (Scott Wilson) well and split in half when the group tried to pull him out, spilling viscera into the apocalypse survivors’ drinking water.
"That thing was so nasty," Singleton admitted during an interview for Wizard World 2020. "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."
Singleton added that director Billy Gierhart had to come over and ask him to stop gagging and that his state made it challenging to follow Gierhart's instructions.
Image credits: AMC
#9 Hannibal’s Gory Dishes
If you’ve seen NBC’s Hannibal, you know that Dr. Hannibal Lecter isn’t just a cannibal; he’s also a master of the culinary arts.
Because of this, the gory dishes showcased on the show have to look like something that came from the Food Network.
The process of recreating specific human body parts called for the help of celebrity chef José Andres, as well as food stylist Janice Poon.
“A lot of times, I'll get a late-night email from Bryan (Fuller, the director’s showrunner) saying, ‘We need a recipe for a leg. What can we do with this leg?’” Poon explained.
"It doesn't always have to be meat ... sometimes an eggplant will look like what you're looking for, like a wrist or something. Then you have to know the bone structure."
The food stylist knows she has done her job well when the crew asks her, “Oh, that looks disgusting. Can I try it?”
Image credits: NBC
#10 Ed Helms Had Too Many Hot Dogs On The Office
During the “Beach Games” episode of The Office, Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) organized a series of absurd trials and contests to pick his successor as Regional Manager. One of them was a hot dog eating contest.
Ed Helms, who played the paper salesman Andy Bernard, found the process of repeatedly chewing and spitting the unhealthy food unbearably disgusting.
Angela Kinsey, who starred as the uptight and religious Angela Martin, revealed that the scenes continually activated Helms' gag reflex. Looking at the communal bucket of chewed hot dog pieces only grossed him out further.
"This was an arduous scene for everyone to shoot," Kinsey said. "I was really lucky, Jenna, because I said, 'My character's a vegetarian. She's not going to be eating these.' But poor Brian, and Ed, [and] Leslie. All those guys were shoving hot dogs in their faces."
Image credits: NBC
#11 Alison Brie Wet Herself On Mad Men
Alison Brie, who played Trudy on Mad Men, described the period drama series as her “first real job.” Among the lessons, it probably taught her to check her wardrobe before relieving herself.
During the first season of the show, the wardrobe department gave Brie underwear that looked like "biker shorts that go all the way up to your ribs" with a "small hole" for going to the bathroom.
"I didn't know for the first season that you weren't supposed to wear underwear under them because they are underwear," the two-time Golden Globes nominee said on the Life Is Short podcast.
"[I] tried to pull the hole open, but I didn’t pull my underwear to the side, so I’m peeing and not hearing it hit the bowl, and then I just feel warmth."
The actress ended up “dabbing” the urine with “a bunch of toilet paper” to return to the set as soon as possible.
Image credits: Late Night with Seth Meyers
#12 Sidney Sweeney’s Realistic Throw-Up Scene On Euphoria
How can one forget Cassie vomiting in the hot tub during season 2 of the hit HBO show? To make the throw-up effect realistic, actress Sidney Sweeney explained, "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 throwup."
“And then I opened my mouth, and it just started shooting out my mouth.”
The actress, who recently starred alongside Glen Powell in the rom-com “Anyone But You,” described the not-so-delicate scene as "the most disgusting thing [she’s] ever experienced."
Image credits: HBO
#13 Pedro Pascal Wasn’t A Fan Of The Clickers On The Last Of Us
The Last of Us takes place in the aftermath of a worldwide fungal pandemic, in which the parasitic Cordyceps virus infects most of the population and turns them into mutated monstrosities.
As a result of the infection, people become disfigured, and the longer you are infected, the more horrifying you look.
The Clickers represent this shocking transition, as they’ve been infected for so long that their skull has split open down the middle, and they’ve become blind and violent.
The monstrous beings were so vile that they disgusted lead actor Pedro Pascal.
During an interview with IGN, he said: "I was grossed out, and I like the ... I like scary stuff. But the Clickers were a little too much for me ... They're kind of like [a] monstrous floral nightmare."
Image credits: HBO
