Movies - TV
William Shatner Played A Brutal Prank While Filming The Twilight Zone
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Perhaps the most famous episode of "The Twilight Zone," "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" follows Bob Wilson (William Shatner) on a flight threatened by a plane-wrecking gremlin.
However, Shatner’s character wasn’t the only one to experience horror, as the actor decided to prank director Richard Donner by making him think he’d plummeted to his death.
In an interview, Donner explained the scene was tough to shoot: "It was an airplane … in a tank, elevated way off the ground. We had to climb up."
He added, "We had massive wind machines. We had lightning machines. We had rain machines. We had effects machines working because we had to also turn the engines."
Since production was difficult, Donner liked to keep the tone on the set light and relaxed; however, this let Shatner and actor Edd Byrnes have a little too much fun with a dummy.
Donner shared, "I hear this screaming and yelling and everything, and I run back and I see [Byrnes and Shatner] fighting. And then they went behind the body of the airplane."
He continued, "All of a sudden, I see Shatner fall off the wing and fall all the way to the bottom — it’s concrete — and he hit the ground. [...] I thought he was dead, man."
Shatner and Byrnes had choreographed a fight on the wing of the plane set wherein Brynes pushed the articulated dummy off right when Donner looked at them.
Donner panicked when he thought Shatner died but relaxed when he found it was a prank, more relieved he didn’t have to shoot the episode all over again than for the star’s safety.