Working on a movie or TV show usually demands a ton of time, commitment, and the ability to juggle different challenges just to meet production deadlines. People from all sorts of professional and personal backgrounds are thrown together for weeks or even months, and that mix can lead to some truly awkward or uncomfortable situations—things most of us would try to avoid in real life. But on set, you just have to power through it.
Of course, the audience never sees that part. What we get is the smooth, edited version, not the messy reality. But every now and then, stories slip out. Whether it’s through interviews, bloopers, or behind-the-scenes videos, we catch a glimpse of the weird stuff that really happened. And honestly? Some of it is kind of gross—but also weirdly fascinating. So here’s a roundup of some of the wildest, cringiest, and most unexpected moments from behind the scenes of fan-favorite movies and TV shows.
1. The Paperboy
Believe it or not, there’s a scene in The Paperboy where Zac Efron actually gets peed on by Nicole Kidman. This happens during the infamous jellyfish moment.
Director Lee Daniels opened up about the behind-the-scenes decision during an interview with Vulture, saying “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.'”
2. The Office
Kissing scenes in The Office weren’t always romantic. Angela Kinsey, who played Angela Martin, shared that her co-star Rainn Wilson “was usually eating something disgusting right beforehand.
“ On her podcast Office Ladies, she recalled the awkwardness, saying “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!'”
3. Chinatown
Faye Dunaway had a rough time filming Chinatown, especially because of director Roman Polanski’s strict set rules.
He didn’t even allow her to use the restroom between scenes. In a moment of frustration and desperation, Dunaway peed in a cup—and then threw it in Polanski’s face to make her point loud and clear.
4. Elf
That over-the-top breakfast spaghetti scene in Elf wasn’t easy to film for Will Ferrell. During the first take, he actually threw up from all the sugar.
According to Screen Rant, they had to shoot it twice, and the sugary overload even gave him a migraine by the end of the day.
5. Game Of Thrones
Charles Dance, who played Tywin Lannister on Game of Thrones, gave a pretty wild insight into the deer skinning scene his character performed.
In an interview with Esquire, he revealed just how real it all was, saying “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!”
6. Now You See Me
In the well-known water tank scene from Now You See Me, Isla Fisher found herself in a terrifying situation.
While performing the three-minute escape stunt, she got stuck underwater because her release chain was tangled in her outfit. What made it worse is that everyone thought she was just acting really well. She later told Chelsea Handler on Chelsea Lately, “I was actually drowning,” “Everyone thought I was acting fabulously. … no one realized I was actually struggling.”
7. Poltergeist
During the filming of Poltergeist, there’s a scene where the character Diane, played by JoBeth Williams, falls into an excavated swimming pool. At the time, she believed the skeletons floating around her were fake props.
But years later, she found out they were real human skeletons. She shared with 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…”
8. The Princess Bride
One of the wildest behind-the-scenes moments from The Princess Bride was a giant fart—literally. Cary Elwes remembers filming the castle storming scene when André the Giant let out an unforgettable 16-second fart.
The sound was so intense that the plywood set shook, and even the sound guy had to lift his headphones. 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!”
9. Candyman
In Candyman, there’s a chilling bee scene that was even scarier in real life. Actor Tony Todd had real bees placed in his mouth while filming. He ended up being stung at least 23 times.
Image source: TriStar Pictures, Kristen Harris
Todd told 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.”
10. Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho pushed boundaries in a lot of ways. One of the more surprising facts is that it was the first movie to show a toilet flushing on screen.
According to the Toronto Star, this moment actually violated the Hays Code, which was the industry’s strict film censorship guidelines at the time.
11. Friends
There’s a hilarious (and kind of gross) behind-the-scenes story from the filming of a Friends episode involving Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer.
During a take for the Thanksgiving episode “The One Where Ross Got High.”, Schwimmer spit out a mouthful of trifle back onto his plate. But LeBlanc didn’t notice. He ended up scooping some of it onto his own plate and eating it during the next take. He shared this moment on The Graham Norton Show, saying “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.”
12. Euphoria
That intense hot tub scene from Season 2 of Euphoria, where Cassie vomits all over the place, wasn’t just done with CGI. It involved some messy practical effects, too.
Sydney Sweeney, who plays Cassie, explained on 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.” She added that it was one of the most disgusting things she’s ever experienced. “”
13. The Birds
Alfred Hitchcock didn’t hold back when filming the final scene of The Birds.
In the moment where Tippi Hedren’s character is attacked by flocks of birds, Hitchcock insisted on using real birds instead of props. This choice turned what could’ve been a standard horror scene into something genuinely terrifying for the actress.
14. Last Man On Earth
While filming a romantic scene in Season 1 of The Last Man on Earth, Kristen Schaal, who played Carol, ended up farting on her co-star Will Forte. Apparently, she had eaten beans beforehand.
She later shared the story on Late Night With Seth Meyers, saying proudly “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.”
15. Pitch Perfect
Not everything about Pitch Perfect was, well, pitch perfect. Shelley Regner, who played Ashley Jones, revealed that they reused a mic that had once been covered in fake vomit.
She tweeted about the experience and pointed out just how easy it was to tell which one was the “puke mic” by the smell. “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.”
16. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The final dinner scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was every bit as horrifying to film as it looked. The set was covered in actual rotting animal carcasses, and filming dragged on for 26 hours in the heat.
Many of the cast and crew had to step out just to get fresh air. Makeup artist Dorothy Pearl was the one responsible for slowing the decay by injecting the food with formaldehyde. She told Telegraph, “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.”
17. Matilda
Who could forget the iconic chocolate cake scene in Matilda? Jim Karz, who played Bruce Bogtrotter, ate a massive amount of cake while filming it.
He recalled the experience in Newsweek, saying “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.” Meanwhile, cinematographer Stefan Czapsky added that the actor who played Bruce actually disliked chocolate cake. They had to use a spit bucket during filming. “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.”
18. Suicide Squad
The chemical bath scene in Suicide Squad, where Harley Quinn and Joker share a dramatic moment, was even more intense to film than it looked.
Margot Robbie, who played Harley, opened up to the Washington Post about how unpleasant the whole experience was. “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.”
19. Star Wars: A New Hope
Mark Hamill has shared plenty of fun behind-the-scenes tidbits from filming Star Wars: A New Hope, but one standout memory involves the blue milk.
Comparing it to the version sold at Disney Parks, he told 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.”