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Even the most accomplished people can still be surprised by their own blind spots and grey areas, whether you are confronted with a familiar scenario that you expect to master or a challenge that feels excessively challenging. In the business of entertainment, this is something that can unexpectedly crop up at any moment, whether it be Emma Stone’s surprising reaction to performing the lift from Dirty Dancing or the common struggle to dance on camera without hearing any music on set.
Many moments can arise on set that you expect to be able to handle, especially if you are a professional, but there are many curveballs in Hollywood, which was something that took Rebecca Ferguson by surprise while starring in a horror film.
Sometimes, actors can be asked to do the darndest things for their craft, ranging from growing a moustache, losing an unhealthy amount of weight or going undercover in a school. However, this can sometimes slightly border on the line of being traumatic and extremely demanding, with the likes of Shelley Duvall and Nicole Kidman having experiences on set in which the line between fiction and reality started to blur.
For Duvall, the shoot of The Shining proved to be nearly as horrific as the story within the film, with the director encouraging the crew to ignore Duvall and subject her to hundreds of takes to add to the mania of her performance. Something similar happened to Kidman although not quite as extreme, with the actor discussing the mental toll of playing Grace in Lars Von Trier’s fucked up allegorical drama, Dogville, in which she had a panic attack after wearing the infamous dog collar for too long.
But for Ferguson, the experience of starring in a horror movie proved to be challenging for different reasons, with the actor thinking that she would be fine while filming a torture scene with herself and a young boy in Doctor Sleep and finding herself very disturbed by the whole experience.
Doctor Sleep, the highly anticipated sequel to The Shining, features Ferguson playing a villain called Rose the Hat who survives by eating the powers of other children. This involves one particularly gruesome scene in which she has to eat a character played by Jacob Tremblay, with Ferguson saying, “I remember being super cocky because someone had said to me, ‘Are you going to feel really emotionally distraught tearing [Jacob Tremblay] to bits and eating him up?’ And I went, ‘No, because I get paid to act.’ Something passive aggressive like that. And then we were rolling. I was getting ready. I’ve got my knife. I’m stretching in the background. And it’s action! And all of a sudden, I hear this sound that is like a pig screaming before slaughter. It is the most harrowing [sound] and I’m standing – I’ve never experienced it, ever – I had tears just start pouring and I’m like, ‘Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t”.
The sound of someone so authentically imitating being tortured was enough to shake Ferguson and distract her from something she has done a million times before, which is no doubt a credit to Tremblay and his harrowing performance in this scene. Ferguson continued, “And I’m just wiping my face thinking, ‘I’m going to ruin it, I’m going to ruin his take!’ And then I glide in and I’m literally, you can see it in the shot, I’m moving my head and wiping tears whilst filming this scene.”
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