Charlie Hunnam explains how they filmed 'craziest puking sequence ever put on screen' in new Monster series
Warning: This article contains images which some readers may find distressing
Charlie Hunnam has opened up about filming a particularly revolting scene in Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story.
There have certainly been plenty of moments of projectile vomiting on film and TV over the years, whether it's Mr Creosote missing the bucket in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, or the prolonged puppet puking scene in Team America: World Police.
On this occasion we have not one but two people who are puking their guts up at dinner, not to mention soiling themselves as well, though thankfully that was only implied through noise.
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In the scene, Abby, played by Rebecca Hall, and Andrew Borden, played by Hunnam, have had the misfortune of eating bad oysters, with some explosively gross results.
The characters' daughter Lizzie and maid Bridget, played by Ella Beatty and Vicky Krieps respectively, had purposefully served them the bad oysters in the hope that they would be killed by the resulting severe food poisoning.
Hunnam has revealed that even with the fake vomit it was still a very unpleasant experience.
“It seemed like it was gonna require being very, very uncomfortable and, you know, I’m kind of a germaphobe," he told Entertainment Weekly. "So even if it’s fake vomit, being covered head to toe in vomit and diarrhea for the day did not seem like a particularly enjoyable experience. And indeed it wasn’t.”
Meanwhile, co-star Rebecca Hall said that she was nervous prior to filming, recalling that she was nervous she would be sick for real.
On the day however, she found that it was so ridiculous that her worries were assuaged by just how insane the whole situation was.
“It was so funny and preposterous, and nothing was remotely like real vomiting, actually,” she said.
“It turned out that my biggest challenge was maintaining a straight face when the camera was on me, because I don’t think I’ve ever laughed more,” said Hall.
Nonetheless, she didn't come out of the experience entirely unscathed.
“I never wanna, as long as I live, see a bowl of tomato soup ever, ever, ever again,” she said. “I really liked grilled cheese and tomato soup, but it is over for me now forever.”
It's certainly a visually arresting scene, to put it mildly, and Winkler explained that there is no CGI here, but strategically placed tubes, and that some trial and error was required to get the angle and velocity just right.
"We do everything once as a dry run without the vomit. So everybody’s faking it,” said Winkler. “Then we do tubes, which we have to do many tests and figure out what’s the distance, what’s too crazy, what’s just crazy enough, what’s too small.
"Then we start with them putting stuff in their mouth and just doing that version of it.”
The series follows the life of murder suspect Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe, though she would be acquitted.
And despite the show featuring some grisly scenes, it was the vomiting scene that really stuck out for people.
"This puking scene in monster is actually insane omfg," wrote one.
"Mind u bodies were getting chopped up every episode but THIS was the moment," wrote another.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story is streaming on Netflix.
Kit Roberts