TV Scenes That Truly Disgusted Actors
Now and again, there comes a television scene that is so horrifically disgusting that some viewers have to turn away from the screen in revulsion. Whether it's due to an excess of gore, a gratuitous amount of violence, or any number of disturbing and explicit acts, countless television scenes can make an audience feel downright nauseous.
Some of the most infamously disturbing television scenes include the gory murder of Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) from "The Walking Dead," the cannibalism scene that opens the very first episode of "Yellowjackets," and the ritual killing of Jarl Borg (Thorbjørn Harr) in "Vikings." As hard as these scenes are to watch, often they can be even harder for the actors who have to participate in them.
Sometimes, it doesn't take any blood at all to cause an actor to lose their lunch while filming, as even a case of bad breath can lead to some disgusting behind-the-scenes stories. Here are just a few of the television scenes that truly disgusted actors.
Emilia Clarke vomited during a scene in Game of Thrones Season 1
Throughout its eight seasons, "Game of Thrones" presented audiences with an exceptional level of gore and bloodshed. "GoT" fans will find it hard to forget the nauseating scene where Oberyn Martell (Pedro Pascal) had his skull crushed into a bloody pulp by Gregor Clegane (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), or the scene where Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) cooked the Frey family into a pie.
One of the earliest scenes that may have caused viewers to feel queasy is the heart-eating scene from Season 1, in which Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) chows down a horse's heart as a part of a Dothraki ritual. As horrific as it might have been to watch, it was reportedly much worse behind the scenes.
"It was very helpful to be given something so truly disgusting to eat, so there wasn't much acting required," Clarke said during an interview with The Mirror. "They made the heart out of solidified jam but it tasted like bleach and raw pasta." The concoction was reportedly so disgusting — and Clarke estimates she ate 28 "hearts" while filming — that she was vomiting into a nearby bucket for much of the day.
Ed Helms was grossed out by a hot dog eating contest in The Office
One of the biggest open secrets in the business is the fact that nobody is eating the food you see on television. Because of the constant need for multiple takes, actors are often forced to spit out their food whenever the camera cuts.
While this behind-the-scenes trick is used frequently in both film and television, it proved to be a bit too much for actor Ed Helms during the "Beach Games" episode of "The Office." Fans of the series will remember that "Beach Games" revolves around an absurd series of trials and contests devised by Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) to pick his successor as Regional Manager. One of these contests is a hot dog eating contest, and for Ed Helms, the process of chewing and spitting the hot dogs became unbearably disgusting after a few takes.
During an episode of the Office Ladies podcast, Angela Kinsey revealed that the repetitive chewing and spitting continually activated Helms' gag reflex, and the communal bucket of chewed hot dog pieces only grossed him out further. Kinsey went on to say that Helms, Brian Baumgartner, and Leslie David Baker were all gagging by the time the shoot wrapped and that their hours of hot dog eating only accounted for a few minutes of screen time.
One Yellowjackets actors threw up while filming the cannibalism scene in Season 2
"Yellowjackets" tells the story of a high school girl's soccer team who crash land in the Canadian wilderness while flying to a championship game. The team lives in the wild for 19 months, slowly losing their grip on reality and committing horrific acts that continue to haunt them well into adulthood.
The tone is set for this grisly survival saga with its very first scene –- in which a girl is impaled on spikes, skinned, cooked, and eaten by her former teammates. Perhaps even more disgusting, however, is the "feast" scene from Season 2, Episode 2, in which the survivors crowd around the dead body of Jackie Taylor (Ella Purnell) and devour her in a mad frenzy, unable to resist the smell of cooked meat.
According to actors Sophie Nélisse and Courtney Eaton, this scene made one of the actors throw up in real life since the fake human flesh tasted horrendous. "We were like 'This is the grossest thing ever,'" said Nélisse during an interview with BuzzFeed News. "It just tasted disgusting." The pair said that the fake meat was made of jackfruit and rice paper, which became extremely soggy and slimy and blended horribly with the smell of the prosthetic corpse. In the end, fellow "Yellowjackets" star Samantha Hanratty did end up puking during this scene, further emphasizing just how disgusting the feast was.
Evan Peters was disgusted by a violent scene in American Horror Story
Throughout his nine seasons on "American Horror Story," Evan Peters has made a name for himself by playing some of the most twisted characters that the series has ever seen. These include the radical cult leader and murderer Kai Anderson from "American Horror Story: Cult," and the irredeemable school shooter Tate Langdon from "American Horror Story: House."
Another one of Peters' more despicable characters is James Patrick March, an eccentric serial killer who built the titular Hotel Cortez in "American Horror Story: Hotel." March took pleasure in inflicting as much pain and suffering as possible onto the victims who would wander into his hotel, often treating his murders like a game, or elaborately butchering his tenants. In an interview with GQ, Peters explained that he finds violent characters like March to be incredibly difficult to play, and recalled that one of March's sex scenes was particularly vile.
Peters explained, "A strange one was when I was Mr. March. I was doing this butterfly razor cutting of this poor girl while I was having sex with her. It was just horrific and weird and sad." Although many of Peters' villains are still revered by the "AHS" fandom, it's clear that these scenes have had an unsettling effect on the actor himself.
[If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).]
Another Game of Thrones scene disgusted actor John Bradley
Given all the gore and death in "Game of Thrones," it makes sense that the series is a repeat offender on this list. Though he may not have had to devour an entire horse heart like Emilia Clarke, actor John Bradley almost lost his lunch over another revolting scene from Season 7.
Fans of the series will remember how Bradley's character Samwell Tarly spends much of Season 7 studying in Oldtown's Citadel to acquire his Maester's chain. For one reason or another, "Game of Thrones" opted to turn Sam's sojourn in the Citadel into perhaps the grossest storyline in the entire series, memorably kicking off his studies with a disgusting montage of Sam emptying every chamber pot in the building.
As if this wasn't bad enough, the Citadel also included a scene that nearly made John Bradley vomit in real life — that being the "grayscale removal" scene with Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen). To treat the aggressive scaly virus covering Mormont's body, Sam is forced to cut off all the pus-filled infected flesh, which was just as gross behind the scenes as it was on camera. "It looked disgusting on the day, too," Bradley admitted to The Hollywood Reporter. "It looks disgusting even when you know it's latex and that there's a man nearby with a bucket filled with creamy gunk. It looks so disgusting." Gross as this scene might have been, Bradley went on to say that he was very happy with Sam's decision to tackle Mormont's disease, saying it was a very brave moment for his character.
Pedro Pascal was grossed out by the Clickers in The Last of Us
Post-apocalyptic drama "The Last of Us" is another series jam-packed with disgusting imagery, particularly with its uniquely terrifying zombies. "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.
Those infected by the virus become horrifically disfigured as the fungus spreads, and the longer you are infected the more monstrous you become. Perhaps the best example is the notorious "Clickers," who have been infected for so long that their skull has split open down the middle, leaving them blind and exceptionally violent. During an interview with IGN, actor Pedro Pascal admitted that he was disgusted by just the sight of the Clickers on set, particularly as they were made with entirely practical effects.
"I was grossed out, and I like the ... I like scary stuff," Pascal said. "But the Clickers were a little too much for me ... They're kind of like [a] monstrous floral nightmare." By contrast, Pascal's co-star Bella Ramsey said she found the Clickers to be somewhat beautiful in their design, regardless of how terrifying they might be.
The well scene from The Walking Dead made IronE Singleton gag
As disgusting as the zombies in "The Last of Us" are, it's safe to say that "The Walking Dead" can give the series a run for its money in terms of gore. Even when the survivors aren't getting torn to shreds, the walkers themselves are often more than enough to make fans feel a bit queasy.
We've seen walkers sliced in half and dragging their guts on the ground, walkers who stay alive after being melted into a parking lot, and even one walker who pushed themselves through a fence so hard that they sliced themselves into chunks. Perhaps the most disgusting zombie of all, however, is from the Season 2 episode "Cherokee Rose" which was so revolting that it made T-Dog actor IronE Singleton gag on set.
The zombie in question was an enormously bloated walker who had fallen into Hershel Greene's (Scott Wilson) well, and who unfortunately split in half when the group tried to pull him out — spilling viscera into the group's drinking water. "That thing was so nasty," Singleton explained 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 went on to say that director Billy Gierhart had to come over and ask him to stop gagging, and that the sight of this revolting walker made it almost impossible to follow Gierhart's instruction.
Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen were both disgusted by Snotgate
Not every disgusting television sequence is the result of visceral gore or horrifying prosthetic monsters. Sometimes actors can be disgusted by something as simple as a kiss. Such was the case in one seemingly innocuous scene in "WandaVision," which focuses on Wanda Maximoff's (Elizabeth Olsen) attempt to revive her deceased lover Vision (Paul Bettany) and create a new family from scratch.
There are a host of disturbing subjects to discuss when it comes to "WandaVision," particularly the fact that Wanda enslaves an entire town to keep up the illusion of her happy family life. For actors Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olsen, however, perhaps the most unsettling scene in the series is the shared kiss between Vision and Wanda, which is affectionately referred to as "Snotgate."
There was one kiss scene in the show that was filmed in extremely cold weather, and at least one (or possibly both) of the actors' noses began running. "She'll tell you a crock of s*** about whose snot it was. I know the truth," Bettany said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "When he has that makeup on, he can't really feel his leaking fluids anyway, like I can," Olsen said in response. "I was like, 'You can't even tell you're snotting! I can! You can't feel your face 'cause it's covered in paint!'" Regardless of whose snot was coming out during this scene, it's clear that both actors were extremely grossed out by it.
Angela Kinsey said her on-screen kisses with Rainn Wilson were disgusting
Although Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany only shared one memorably revolting kiss, "The Office" star Angela Kinsey has said almost every kiss she shared with Rainn Wilson was downright disgusting.
Fans of the series will remember the strange, oddly formal relationship between Dwight Schrute (Wilson) and Anglea Martin (Kinsey), who attempt to keep their romance a secret from the rest of the office, and who finally marry one another in the series finale. Despite being at the center of the series' longest on-again-off-again romance, Kinsey says that the kisses between Dwight and Angela were disgusting due to Rainn Wilson's eating habits.
"For whatever reason, he was usually eating something disgusting right beforehand," Kinsey said during an episode of the Office Ladies podcast. "Yeah, I remember he would always be like downing a cup of coffee and an everything bagel," added co-star Jenna Fischer. "And he'd be like, 'I'm ready for my kissing scene' and you would be like, 'Rainn! A mint. Can you do something?'"
Karl Urban was grossed out during the whale scene in The Boys
Dark superhero drama "The Boys" is another show with plenty of disturbing scenes and abundant gore. The very first episode includes a scene in which Hughie Campbell's (Jack Quaid) girlfriend explodes into a pile of bloody viscera right before his eyes, and things only get more outrageous from there.
Through three seasons of "The Boys" the characters have come into contact with an enormous quantity of blood (and other bodily fluids), including one exceptionally nasty incident where Hughie and Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) ram a speedboat into the stomach of a beached whale. The scene is about as disgusting as you can imagine, with Hughie and Butcher both getting caked head-to-toe in whale guts, and Hughie sitting in stunned silence beside the whale's still-pulsing organs.
This diabolically gross scene made a particular impact on actor Karl Urban, who found the prosthetic whale to be utterly disgusting. "It was a fully functioning set. So the interior of the whale is just blood and guts," Urban explained in an interview with news.com.au. "And I still got a beating heart in the corner and it was pretty bloody gross to be fair." In a separate interview for the 2020 CTAM Summer Press Tour, Urban said that the fake guts became unbearably hot in the sun and attracted a swarm of insects — making the set somehow even more disgusting than when they started filming (per TV Guide).
Millie Bobby Brown was disgusted the first time she saw Vecna in Stranger Things
The fourth season of the supernatural drama series "Stranger Things" was also one of its most visceral to date, giving audiences some of the most brutal death scenes the show has ever seen.
In addition to a grisly scene in which the unfortunately-named Jason Carver (Mason Dye) is sliced in half by an interdimensional portal, this season also includes several brutal murders at the hands of the psychic serial killer Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). Each one of these murders plays out in the same manner, with the victim being lifted into the air, having all of their limbs broken, and then having their eyes pop inside their skull. These gruesome scenes are undeniably difficult to watch, though perhaps even more revolting is the appearance of Vecna himself — a hulking, noseless monstrosity with deformed claws and tendrils embedded deep in his flesh.
For series staple Millie Bobby Brown, just the sight of Vecna was enough to drive her to tears, since she found the prosthetics to be downright disgusting. "They brought [Brown] up into a position where she's bound," explained Bower during an interview with Variety. "I walked up to her [as Vecna] and she burst into tears. She wouldn't look at me and she was visibly just disgusted by the whole thing." Bower said that his co-star eventually settled down after realizing that it was still Bower underneath all that terrifying makeup, though her immediate reaction makes it clear just how gross Vecna must have looked on set.
Kevin Costner was grossed out by a seemingly innocuous scene in Yellowstone
Taylor Sheridan's incredibly popular neo-Western series "Yellowstone" revolves around the exploits of the ruthless Dutton family, owners and operators of the titular Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. The leader of this family is John Dutton (Kevin Costner), and throughout the series, we've watched John go to some incredibly dark places while protecting his family.
Considering all of the times we've watched John order hits and murder his competitors in cold blood, it's somewhat ironic that one of Costner's most difficult scenes occurred over the dinner table. According to Gabriel Guilbeau (the real-life caterer for "Yellowstone," who also plays John's chef Gator), Kevin Costner was legitimately disgusted by a scene that involved grilled octopus.
"In no way, shape, or form would he ever eat the grilled octopus," Guilbeau said during an interview with Delish. "I set this big sea spider down in front of poor Kevin Costner ... He gave me this look, and it was [a] genuine reaction that you see in the show of 'Gator, what the hell is that?'" For all the murder that goes on in "Yellowstone," there's something hilarious about the fact that a grilled octopus was the thing that bothered Costner.