Pierce Brosnan Stopped Eating Fire After A Dangerous Mishap On The Muppets

To state the obvious up front: Pierce Brosnan was the best James Bond, and his 1995 film "GoldenEye" is one of the five best James Bond movies. Brosnan had all the suavity Bond required, and "GoldenEye" questions the character's necessity in a world of changing politics. "Tomorrow Never Dies" is almost as good. 

In between those movies, however, came Brosnan's most chilling assignment yet: starring in an episode of "Muppets Tonight." The show, for those who don't recall, was an earnest attempt to reboot "The Muppet Show" in a modern milieu. Several new characters were introduced, and the tone was a little more "late night" than the original "Muppet Show," but the vibe was the same. "Muppets Tonight" was, natch, a variety show in which celebrities would appear to sing, dance, or show off any other unusual talents they possessed, all in front of an eager audience of Muppet performers.

The main joke in Brosnan's episode is that he's playing himself, but the Muppets all assume he's just like James Bond in real life. Hence, they keep asking him to perform action scenes and do spy stuff, forcing Brosnan to explain that, no, he's actually just an actor. Then, at the end of the episode, Brosnan gets to show off an unusual strange talent of his: fire-eating. It seems that Brosnan, as a younger performer, used to eat fire in street performances. A fire-eating mishap on set, however, didn't go so well, and resulted in Brosnan burning the inside of his mouth. After that, the actor gave up fire-eating altogether. Indeed, Brosnan discussed his Muppet-related fire-eating mishap on a 2006 episode of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," and it sounds quite painful.

According to Brosnan, he filmed his episode of "Muppets Tonight" shortly after "GoldenEye" was released in theaters. He reiterated the central gag of the episode: The Muppets expect him to behave like James Bond and throw him into action and stunt scenarios without preparation. Naturally, all the stunts go wrong on the show. The very first stunt Brosnan performed, however, went wrong for real. He was asked to crack out his old fire-eating act and even brought his own gear, just like back in the day. As he remembered it:

"After I did the first Bond movie, the Muppets called me up and said, 'We'd like you to be on the show.' And they said, 'Do you dance or sing?' and I said, 'No, but I used to do a fire-eating act,' and they said, 'Great! You're in!' And so I went to the show that day and spent the whole day shooting the show. And I made my own brands out of pieces of dowling and cotton wool. I had my kerosene any everything. [...] We shot the last scene first, and that was me blowing the flames. I blew the flames [during rehearsal] and everyone applauded. They thought I was brilliant."

But then, at the last minute, one of the show's prop masters proposed a substitution. Fire-eating, for the layperson, involves actually putting fire into your mouth and extinguishing a torch in there. It's not a trick. It's the real thing. Many fire-eaters like to end their act with a flame-breathing maneuver, which looks very impressive indeed. For fire-spitting, a performer usually fills their mouth with kerosene or some other flammable liquid, then spits the liquid onto a torch.

It was that last part that went wrong.

It seems that one of the stagehands on "Muppets Tonight" knew about the way fire-eaters have to put kerosene in their mouths and understood how uncomfortable it was. Talk to any fire-eater, and they'll tell you that kerosene doesn't taste good. The stagehand, however, in trying to help Brosnan, ended up injuring his mouth. Here's how Brosnan recounted the incident:

"They said, 'Okay, let's go for the take.' And the prop master said, 'Listen, guy, I've got this stuff here. It's tasteless, odorless, amazing.' I said, 'Okay, let's use it.' I went out there, and Gonzo said, 'What else can you do? And I said, 'What about this?' And I blew this flame ... which traced right back into my mouth. Blew my mouth up. I had to continue the rest of the day's work with a lot of blisters. That was the last time I ever did fire-eating." 

Brosnan didn't say what the tasteless liquid was, but it was apparently far more flammable than regular kerosene. He tried to stay in character for the rest of that scene, wiping his injured mouth and pronouncing his lines to the best of his abilities. If you go back and watch his other scenes from the episode, you'll notice that he does, in fact, spend most of his screen time lisping slightly and verbally limping through his burnt mouth.

It also seems he's been as good as his word since he gave that interview. As far as I can figure, he hasn't done any additional fire-eating to date. I would advise that Sabrina Carpenter follow his lead during her own "Muppet Show" special.