Macaulay Culkin explains disturbing truth behind traumatizing 'My Girl' death scene
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Macaulay Culkin, News, US News
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Macaulay Culkin, News, US News
Macaulay Culkin has shared an alarming detail about the production of one of the films he starred in as a child.
Many movies intended for children contain some unsettling and straight up horrifying moments.
There's the trauma factory that is Watership Down, where rabbits suffer all manner of terrifying deaths, or the chickens in Chicken Run watching in resigned horror as one of their own is beheaded.
But 1991's My Girl, with Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, featured a particularly grisly end for his character, made all the worst for the fact that the character is just a child at the time.
Advert
For those that aren't familiar, this is that his character Thomas J is stung to death by a swarm of bees at just 10 years old.
Now Culkin, 45, has revealed an alarming aspect of how that scene was actually made.
In the On Film…With Kevin McCarthy podcast Culkin said that they had actually used real bees to film the infamous scene.
“I was working with the bees,” Culkin, 45, said.
He added: “The way they did that, they wouldn’t do that today. They put this stuff on my fingertips that smells like the queen bee so [the bees] were actually attracted to my hands and I wasn’t a threat.
“They actually released thousands of bees on me, imagine that! I’m not joking, those are real bees. That would not fly today."
Things only got worse when it came to how they managed to film the scene to make it look more dramatic.
“They just told me to wave my hands in front of my face so the bees can get in front of my face and it looks good for the camera," he said.
But there was some warning, with Culkin explaining that he was told get away from the bees as quick as he could between takes.
“As soon as they yelled ‘cut’ I had to soap my hands in hot water and then dart into the woods,” he said.
Well, that's alright then.
Culkin even recalled a useful piece of advice that the bee handler gave him,“The bee handler gave me a piece of advice, he said, ‘human beings run faster than bees fly’. I was like, ‘but I’m 10. How fast do you think I am?’" the former child actor recalled.
“We did four takes. I didn’t get stung. I got a stinger in my neck, it didn’t sting me, my neck went into the stinger. It didn’t break off.”
It does seem slightly counterintuitive to film a scene where a child gets stung to death by a swarm of bees by releasing a swarm of bees at a child, but thankfully Culkin is here to share the story!