Actors don’t really hide the fact that they don’t read every line of the script like they should. And there’s also of course actors not reading the source material and/or production companies hiding the true story from their own actors. All these factors can lead to some awkwardness, where people are filming and the actors have no clue who’s going to die on screen.
Let’s take a look at some awkward filming situations where people had no idea someone was going to die.
The Snapped Avengers
Infinity War saw half of the universe
getting snapped by Thanos, including more than half of the Avengers cast up
until then. Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, pretty much all the Guardians of the
Galaxy, Black Panther, Winter Soldier, … They all got snapped right in front of
us. And as it turns out, the people on set didn’t know who was getting snapped
until right before filming the scene either. Talk about spoiler containment!
Game of Thrones
Apparently, reading the books wasn’t really mandatory when filming Game of Thrones. Conleth Hill, who plays Varys, admitted he expected someone to save Ned Stark from his unfortunate decapitation. Hempstead Wright, the actor that plays Bran Stark, didn’t read the script for the episode where Oberyn Martell fights the Mountain and thought the Viper would win this fight. Considering how both of these things were pretty much copy-pasted from the books, I guess they should have known, right?
Grandpa Frank
In Modern Family, we were all pretty shook
when we found out that grandpa Frank had died. The worst part of all however,
is that Sarah Hyland, who plays his granddaughter Haley, actually didn’t know
her on-screen grandfather would be dying either. She wasn’t in that episode so
didn’t read its script, leading her to discover grandpa Frank’s death later
than her colleagues – and accidentally spoiling it when she did find out.
The Magicians
In the season finale of The Magicians’
fourth season, they killed off their protagonist, Quentin Coldwater. The show’s
creators had the cast film another scene that undid his death, however. This
meant that when the episode aired, even the cast had no idea that Quentin’s
death was going to be a permanent decision and he really did sacrifice himself
to save his friends. Jason Ralph, who played Quentin, was in on the loop and
had to keep quiet for almost a year – not even mentioning his very permanent
demise to his co-stars.
Tony Stark
Avengers: Endgame had us say goodbye to some of our beloved Avengers that we’d been following in their battle against Thanos for over a decade. The one that probably hit everyone the most was Tony Stark. Sebastian Stan, who plays the Winter Soldier, admitted that at the day of filming Tony’s funeral, he thought they were doing a scene where someone was getting married. Good thing he didn’t show up on set with a gift!
