“You were really nice about it”: the multiple productions shut down by Woody Harrelson’s farts
No production is guaranteed to go off without a hitch, and shutdowns can happen for any number of reasons, but perhaps Hollywood should implement some kind of protocol or warning system after more than one shoot was ground to a halt by Woody Harrelson’s farts.
He certainly wouldn’t be the first actor to cause an emergency evacuation of the set after rampantly passing gas, but unlike the abhorrent scents Andre the Giant regularly wafted across The Princess Bride, Harrelson is not a colossally-sized human being with a habit of pounding dozens of pints and devouring enough food in a single sitting to feed an entire family.
And yet, it’s been happening for decades, with Ted Danson revealing that his old Cheers co-star had an unwanted reputation for forcing the cast and crew to hit the pause button on the sitcom favourite after he started filling the air with wretched smells that left them unable to carry out their duties.
Cheers aired its final episode in May 1993, but in an unfortunately fitting turn of events, the issue lingered. More than 30 years later Harrelson shot underwater survival thriller Last Breath alongside Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Barbie actor Simu Liu, who had the same stories to tell.
Some of the scenes between Liu and Harrelson were filmed inside a saturation chamber, and Danson was curious whether they were really locked in there together. “Did you shoot in that chamber where you have to be on board the ship? What’s it called?” he asked on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast.
Harrelson clarified that technically, it was, but not a real one. Set or otherwise, Danson had a very specific reason for his line of inquiry. “There’s a reason why I bring this up,” he explained. “When I worked with Woody, it was a huge soundstage, but his vegetarian farts were so horrible that he would shut down production. I’m just wondering what happened with you.”
The three-time Academy Award nominee made a point of correcting Hanson to inform him they were actually vegan farts, only for Liu to confirm that he’d been trapped in the exact same boat anyway. “They were vegan farts, to be fair,” he agreed. “You were really nice. I think you were really nice about it.”
For decades, then, Harrelson has been disrupting production schedules with his wayward farts, but it clearly hasn’t convinced him to alter his diet in an attempt to ensure his arse doesn’t gain the unwanted reputation of being difficult to work with. Cheers and Last Breath may have been separated by decades, but who’s to say he hasn’t sneakily been farting his way around the industry the entire time without being rumbled as the culprit?
