Our Top 3 Scariest Moments on Set

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio.

Biagio: Who did this episode? Oh, oh, so. It’s episode 121. We’re sharing our top three scariest moments from production. Real nightmares. Like dealing with demon dogs in the workplace. Freaking out when lawyers tell you to ignore basic human instincts. How to create a homemade sauna that probably won’t kill you. What to do if you wake up dead and we have a good time getting in the Halloween spirit? Oh. We’re so weird. Cracks me up. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music. Dave, calm. Hey, everybody. She is joke. He’s Biagio. We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: All right. Well, it is episode 121 and we are in the Halloween spirit. Oh. We’re so weird. Cracks me up, though. Look, we always have to try to have a little bit of fun with our Halloween podcast this year. Like, what can we do? What can we talk about? And then joke had a brilliant idea.

Joke: Wait, what? Is this my idea? I don’t think so.

Biagio: Okay. It was actually my idea. I was just trying to give you credits.

Joke: Oh, that’s what you think.

Biagio: Is it? Yeah. So I had a brilliant idea, which was to talk about our three scariest onset moments. We.

Joke: We’re really bad at this. Yeah. I mean, you know, we all have scary moments on set. You know, there’s just production things of like, oh, my God, am I going to make today? But then these are really kind of like big still kind of like PTSD moments for us.

Biagio: Yeah, yeah. And because listen, here’s the thing about production. Any of you who’ve been through it know it’s I mean, it is an adventure out there. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Nothing you plan ever goes as planned.

Joke: Well, we called it war for a reason.

Biagio: We’ve called it war for a reason. It’s a little bit like going the battle, because you’re getting in there, and you’re going to have to fight the good fight all the way through that production. But sometimes really horrible, scary things happen.

Joke: Now, the good news is, just for those of you that don’t like anything scary, they all have happy endings.

Biagio: They do. You just you never know what you’re going to run into when you’re in production. And sometimes really scary things happen.

Joke: So the main thing is you got to be able to like, roll with the punches, serve those ways, whatever analogy you want to come up with. But when something happens that, you know, puts all your stressors on red alert or Defcon, whatever, you you just got to you got to do what you got to do.

Biagio: Got to do what you got to do, man. And so so here, in the spirit of that, our top three scariest onset moments. Number one.

Joke: Appropriately, on.

Biagio: A show called. Scream Queens.

Joke: This was actually season two where we had our scream Queen host was Jamie King who’s awesome. Fantastic. You’ve seen him a million things. And so she has her trailer on set.

Biagio: Of course she’s a star.

Joke: She’s a star. She has a trailer on set. And her husband oftentimes who’s a director. His name is Kyle Newman. Great director. He would he would often come and hang out with her. And they also at the time she she’s now they’re now parents to beautiful boys. But at the time they didn’t have kids, but they did have fur babies. And they had a little dog that would often come and just hang out in the trailer. Or, you know, she’d take it for a walk in between setups and stuff like that. And so Jamie King and Kyle and the dog were all kind of like part of the Scream Queens family, and everything’s great. Okay, so now imagine it’s late at night. We have an elimination. And so all the hosts, all the the whole cast, everybody is there. It’s in the big kind of soundstage and there’s a lot of stops and goes on these nights.

Biagio: Yeah. Super stressful. You know, an elimination. For those of you who might not be familiar with the terminology, that’s like when someone gets sent home right on survivor. The tribe is spoken on our show. It was you get the ax.

Joke: This isn’t our.

Biagio: Horror horror, our horror acting show. So, you know, when it comes to elimination, you’re super stressed. Everything’s got to go, right? You got to make sure that you get great reactions. But the girls don’t get so upset that they don’t want to talk to you. It’s just a lot of pressure.

Joke: And a lot of it is like, you know, you have all the cameras there and you’re, you know, the host has to like, really stretch things out so that we can get all the reaction shots. It’s tiring for everyone involved. The control room is a flutter, a buzz. It’s like it’s everybody is working at 150%, right. Everyone’s ready for the eliminated girl’s emotional breakdown. And, you know, we have people standing by to help that girl. I mean, anyway, it’s a crazy day. So things, we’re moving along great and everything was wonderful. And we had one of these stop downs that was happening like a break. And I’m outside talking on the street. We’re shooting this downtown Los Angeles, by the way. This is like sixth Street. It’s frankly like maybe a handful of blocks from Skid Row. You know, where we were. It was kind of fine, but it’s just deserted. It’s like 10:00 at night or something. It was definitely late. Like, no one’s out on the street. But I’m talking to our network executives who are actually in New York now. Again, if it’s 10:00 hour time, it was like, well past midnight over there. And they want to know, like, how’s it going? Right. Because these are the big ones. So I’m on the street on the phone. My DP’s out there taking a break, and I’m just talking to the network executive, and I see the wardrobe person opening up the trailer door to Jamie’s trailer. Jamie and Kyle at this point are, like, on set. You know, they’re they’re in the studio and out of nowhere, her dog just runs.

Biagio: Out and escape, jumps out of.

Joke: The trailer and starts running down the street. I wardrobe department head literally like, drops everything and just starts chasing after this dog. Might need pee search running after the dog. I’m literally on the phone with the network going oh my god, Jimmy King’s dog just escaped. I gotta go and hang up. I’m running! I yell out like, help! Anybody needs help! So I have like 2 or 3 pa come running and we are full on downtown, middle of the street, trying to stop this dog from getting run over, running the skid row. We’re right by the sixth Street Bridge. I was like, oh my God, like what is happening? And it just was the most heightened thing was now looking back, maybe may have lasted a couple of minutes.

Biagio: But. It felt like an hour.

Joke: It felt like an hour. We’re literally like we got close a few times and then the dog would run away and we ended up kind of encircling the dog. And finally our DP, who has dogs at home, I think was able to kind of like lure the dog or the dog was interested in the other dog smell, maybe on his pants, I don’t know. But Jamie King’s dog got close enough for the deep. He could grab it and we’re all.

Biagio: Like.

Joke: Wow, escape this horrible disaster. And so they were able to safely put the dog back in the trailer and riders were closing the trailer door. Kyle, Jamie’s husband, comes walking out, probably to check on the dog or whatever, and I go, everything’s okay, everything’s okay to dog’s fine. And he was like, what are you talking about?

Biagio: Because I don’t know, like, I.

Joke: Really thought he was coming out because people.

Biagio: Were like, oh my God.

Joke: Your dog’s in the middle of the street. But he had no idea. And I was like, oh, thank God. I was like, it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. The dog ran out, but we got it. It’s back in there. Just please keep the door closed. And he was like, oh, okay. So frankly, I don’t know if Jamie King ever heard this story, but that was one of those moments where we’re like, oh man. And I remember the adrenaline dump that came after her. I was just like, I felt like useless for the rest of the night. You were thankfully great in the control room and everybody else, but I remember it was like a good probably half hour after everything was okay, that I was like, oh man, I should call the network back.

Biagio: Oh, those people, I call them. And they were like, oh my God. I’ve been sitting on pins and needles and.

Joke: I was.

Biagio: Like.

Joke: I am so sorry. I’m so sorry. Everything’s fine. Dogs fine. The rest of the shoot went fine. We’re all good. And they’re like, oh, that’s good. So yeah, that’s one of those things where you don’t want to think about like, God forbid something happens to your talents, dog in the middle of a shoot, but probably wouldn’t have been able to finish the shoot that night, and that would have set us back a lot. So that was a scary moment.

Biagio: So that was scary moment number one. Let’s move on to scary set moment number two on the set of our show Caged.

Joke: Cage in Louisiana.

Biagio: Oh, I love that show. I love those kids.

Joke: It was great. I mean, I think this is a different kind of scary one because it, it really it it just became it was a constant like, you know, should we or should we not. And so just kind of set the stage. This was during our pilot shoot. Yeah. So we were new to this world, new to Louisiana. Definitely new to the Louisiana August humidity, heat. Whether new to MMA and what these kids go through to make weight and everything. So this was this was the morning of making weight. And so making weight means that like before a fight, they have to hit a certain weight level weight because you fight in a weight class. And if you are over that, if you wait too much, you are not allowed to fight. And you know, for these kids who are like competing to kind of like make a name for themselves and potentially get out of this town, making weight at these fights was hugely important.

Biagio: Because it’s a big deal. If they don’t make weight, they don’t get the fight they lose, they don’t get. The fight.

Joke: Yeah, they might not get another shot. So it’s a big deal. And so one of the kids, it’s not a case a young man you know he’s a man now we were following his name was Wes Wesley Branch.

Biagio: When he was in his 20s. Like, no.

Joke: I know we call him kids because, you know.

Biagio: We’re so old now.

Joke: And there’s so much younger than us. But, you know, he was in his 20s. You know, he’s a he’s a grown man. And he he decides to. So we have lots of fighters who are all prepping and some of them are making weight or cutting weight by, like, you know, going to a gym and like really hitting the treadmill and sitting in a sauna. And Wes, you know, is is from, you know, from the street. I guess he just does. He’s like, I don’t do that. I don’t have the money for that. That’s not necessary. And so he literally just starts putting on black garbage bags and then sitting inside of his car with no AC in the middle of the field, in the middle of the day, in the middle of August, in the middle of Louisiana. And it was hot.

Biagio: It was I was hot, and I was outside in short sleeves and shorts.

Joke: And it was one of those things where you you see this happening and you see him starting to get kind of delirious and everything. And I was like, oh my God, I’m gonna have to call 911. This guy is going to completely like pass out and this is not healthy. And so this is when, you know, you talk to lawyers ahead of time and all this stuff. And where as producers, you need to understand the difference between kind of a house show, which is Scream Queens, where we almost take responsibility for you as you come into the house. We’re responsible for everything that happens to you. You know, you you get a rash in the hot tub. It’s our hot tub. This is our doing. But on cage, which is very much a documentary series, it’s the opposite. We almost can’t get involved. Right. So it’s one of those things where if we mess in your everyday life by. If we make a decision that actually changes things in your everyday life, then then we won’t. Haven’t done our job. But to we could be held responsible for that and we don’t want that. So one of the things we talked about a lot is, okay, let’s say these kids go out and party and we see someone who might want to get behind the wheel drunk, like, what can we do? And the truth of the matter is, you know, we can’t necessarily take their keys or we can’t whatever, but we can make sure someone else does, right? So we can say, hey, you’re their friend. That person is getting behind the wheel drunk. You can’t like, don’t let them do that. Or we can alert the bartender. Or we could do other people, but technically, we’re not allowed to, like, get involved.

Biagio: Technically, we can inspire action, just not take action, right? So in this.

Joke: Case, I was.

Biagio: Like, oh, someone should call 911. And his best.

Joke: Bud, John Wesley Reed, was there and he was like, he’s fine. And I was.

Biagio: Like, is he though?

Joke: He’s like, yeah, he’s fine. He’s done this before. And it was it was scary for me because.

Biagio: We’re both. Of. Us seen it. We’ve never seen.

Joke: It before. And so it’s.

Biagio: Like, okay, like.

Joke: We’re trying to. Inspire action. But you know, his best friend who’s completely, you know.

Biagio: Clearheaded.

Joke: Sober, not like doing anything. You know, he’s he’s fully aware and conscious and doing all the right things is like, look, if he doesn’t make this way, he can’t do to fight. And I’ve seen him in this day before and he’s fine. And I did have my finger on the 911 button. And I was just waiting. I was like, oh my God. At what point do I press this button? But everything worked out fine. He he stumbled out of.

Biagio: The car.

Joke: He didn’t quite know.

Biagio: Where he was.

Joke: They they put him in another car, drove him to the weight room. He made weight.

Biagio: He made.

Joke: And then they, like, you know, dumped gallons of Pedialyte in him. And he ended up winning the fight.

Biagio: So. Yeah, by the way, I don’t think that’s exactly the healthiest way to go about it. But the point was, you know, this was something that he did to make weight regularly. He couldn’t afford to go to a gym with a nice sauna. So his sauna was his car in the middle of a field, you know. So but that was but it was, it was scary because you’re like, what? What do we do? We know what we’re supposed to do. But does it feel right? And I think the fact that John Wesley was there was like, listen, he’s done this a bunch of times. This is how we this is how he cuts. What. A lot of us cut white. He’s fine if he starts throwing up or something like that that, you know, really bad, then you know, okay, maybe it’s time to quit, but otherwise he’s fine. And, you know, he was right. At least in that moment he was right. Right.

Joke: But that’s the thing. It was scary because it was all new to us. And had it just been us in him, we probably would have called 911 because we had never seen that before. But that’s why it’s important as a producer to to kind of know what you’re dealing with and call your lawyers, know what what you can and can’t do. And again, you know, ultimately you don’t like if you were just hanging around and you’re seeing somebody do something that is that seems dangerous, you know, you have your human duty, whatever obligation to step in. But this kid had it under control and it looked really scary to us. But it was something, frankly, that we saw him do again and again moving forward on the series. And it was a lot less scary for us then because we’re like, oh yeah, no, we see this process and this is what this is what they do. And even when we did the boxing show, you know, we’re now we’re talking about like Showtime and HBO boxing, we see those like professional boxers. You’ve heard their names. We see them do the same thing. Not in garbage bags in a car in the middle of Louisiana. But we see them push their bodies to lose every little drop of extra water weight so that they can get on that scale and make that magic number.

Biagio: So yeah. So that was spooky. Sticks with us to this day. I’m so glad he was all right. And I’m so glad that we didn’t panic. Okay. That moves us on to scary set moment number three. And this was on our show Sister Witches. This was a pilot we shot with Joey and Natalie. Yeah, I think.

Joke: This was actually for the pit shoot.

Biagio: Because I was right. This was before we sold it to oxygen. This was for the actual pitch shoot. Yeah. And where.

Joke: Were you guys staying?

Biagio: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Yeah.

Joke: No, but you were saying some, like.

Biagio: Old, some. Old haunted hotel. It was, like, famous for. I can’t remember the name of it. It was famous for like, oh, it’s supposedly haunted. So I go back, go to bed. And it was. I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t move, and I feel like something is laying on top of me, like there’s this super heavy something on my chest and my legs, my arms, and it’s so freaky and I can’t move. And I’m like, what is going on? And I’m trying to tell myself to stay calm. Like it must be like this, you know, sleep paralysis or whatever. If you’re.

Joke: Half sleeping.

Biagio: Maybe I was half sleeping. It didn’t feel that way. And it felt like every time I sat up, something pushed me down. So that was really freaky. So. Okay, so anyways, it stops, I think. I think I got up and use the bathroom and breathe deeply and somehow fell back asleep. The next morning, go down to breakfast and Joey and Natalie are down there and I’m like, you’re never gonna believe what happened to me last night. And I tell them the story. And Natalie goes, oh my God, the same thing. Happened. To me last night. I woke up in the middle of the night on my back. I couldn’t move. It was like something kept pushing me down. I’m like, shut up. You’re just totally messing with me. She’s like, no, I swear to God, I swear to God. So I’m like, okay, well that’s weird. Did we maybe eat some kind of crazy poison and not know it? Like, you know, that toxin. Or something? It was the shrimp. It was the shrimp. Who knows? But. Okay, so. So we go to we go to set because we’re doing more shooting with the sister witches and their mom, who’s like the head which. And we tell them the story and they all turn white and they’re like, oh my gosh, you got blanketed. And I was like, I got what you got blanketed. I’m like, what is blanketed mean? Apparently it’s getting blanketed is because you accidentally made some unholy connection with a dead person from the other side. They follow you back to your room, and then at some point in the middle of the night, decide to lay on top of you. That’s how they explained it to me. Tell me.

Joke: They sage you right.

Biagio: After. They did. Sage me right after the while I’m telling him the story. The mom ran and got sage and was like burning it over me. And she’s saying like this crazy chant that I’m like, They’re like, we need to rid you of this evil. Well, here’s.

Joke: A question. Did it happen again to following night?

Biagio: I did. Not they they would say. They read me of the evil. So I don’t know if you believe in ghosts. Are you believe in sleep paralysis? I was definitely a little freaked out by that. And the fact that it was on the set of Sister Witches, and I do kind of believe in ghosts a little bit more than joke does. So it was a very it was pretty freaky that for us are the three moments we talk about the most, where in one way or another, we were pretty scared on set. I’m sure you’ve got your own. If you got a scary set moment, tweet it to us at at Biagio. Let us know what your scary set moment was. And that’s it for the month of October.

Joke: Thank you guys so much. Have a safe and happy Halloween.

Biagio: We’ll be back next month with our special Thanksgiving episode. All right. Talk soon. Producing unscripted.

Unidentified Voice: Joe can be you.