The latest season of Monster may well be the anthology show’s bloodiest to date – but that’s not the reason it made for an especially stomach-churning shoot for some of its lead actors.
As those who’ve watched the most recent episodes will already know, before the show’s depiction of Lizzie Borden takes an axe to her father and stepmother, she first tries to kill them in a different way.
In episode two, she and the family’s maid, “Maggie”, serve the heads of the household a dinner of spoiled oysters, which leads to an especially gruesome sequence involving sickness and diarrhoea.
Unfortunately, cast member Rebecca Hall – who plays Abby Borden in Monster – suffers from emetophobia, an intense fear of vomiting, which made the shoot especially difficult.
Director Max Winkler told TheWrap: “Rebecca has a very hard time being around vomiting and said very early that she is inclined to vomit if she’s around it. So that was my biggest fear, protecting Rebecca.”
In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Max recalled: “That was the hardest thing we did because Rebecca cannot have anything in her mouth or else she vomits. She’s very, very afraid of vomiting. If she sees vomit, she vomits. So that was difficult because we did it all practically.”
“Her and Charlie [Hunnam] were heroes for that. Charlie actually ate the oysters, for which I will always be grateful,” he continued. “And Rebecca did one of the bravest things, because it’s a real thing, her thing. She was like shaking, so her courage to do that and to trust me [was so appreciated].”
“We tried to do it as quickly as possible, and it pays off because she’s so amazing in it,” he continued.
“I’m kind of a germaphobe,” he admitted to Entertainment Weekly. “So even if it’s fake vomit, being covered head to toe in vomit and diarrhoea for the day did not seem like a particularly enjoyable experience.
“And, indeed, it wasn’t.”
Fortunately, for Rebecca, the shoot wasn’t half as bad as she was expecting.
“It was so funny and preposterous, and nothing was remotely like real vomiting, actually,” she enthused. “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.”
Series lead Ella Beatty seemingly had her own fears to get over on set.
“I’m a huge scaredy-cat,” she told Tudum. “I don’t even like watching TikToks of people falling down!”
All four seasons of Monster are now streaming on Netflix, with rumours about a fifth instalment already circulating.
