A wild tale. Neve Campbell is known for starring in horror movies, but her real-life story of a bear attack on set is scarier than anything dreamed up on film.
The Scream star, 48, recalled a frightening incident that occurred when she was filming an unnamed project at age 17. “I was playing this role where she’s ‘one with the animals’ and there was a scene where I was getting chased by a bear,” the Canada native said during the Wednesday, January 12, episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show. “They brought this bear on set and they first gave me this big bottle of Coke to feed it. [After feeding it], they said, ‘Dip your hand in honey and just run.’”
The Party of Five veteran said that she followed those instructions, but when she put her hand out for the bear, it didn’t react as expected. “The bear is not slowing down and he’s not coming for my hand,” the Craft actress continued. “He grabs me by the leg and he pulls me through the forest. My mother was visiting set and she’s screaming. The whole crew is frozen because nobody can believe what’s happening. All I can think to say is, ‘He’s biting me,’ like it’s not obvious.”
The production’s bear wrangler came to her rescue by “throwing rocks” at the animal, giving Campbell time to run in another direction. “It’s silly,” she said, noting that she sustained no injuries from the incident. “We get asked to do silly things.”
Though the crew assured her she wouldn’t have to do the scene again, the Skyscraper actress offered to give it another shot because the first go-round wasn’t filmed. “Actors are so different from musicians,” host Kelly Clarkson quipped. “I would be like, ‘Bye!'”
The Wild Things star is busy promoting the new Scream film, which hits theaters on Friday, January 14. Though there were seemingly no bears involved in the production, she did do some of her own stunts for the movie — and she felt the burn afterward.
“I was like, ‘I’ll do any stunt, no problem,'” she said during a Tuesday, January 11, appearance on the U.K. show Lorraine. “And this time I was like, ‘That hurt.'”
Her relationships with her costars, however, haven’t changed at all. “[It] felt like yesterday,” she said, recounting her reunion with David Arquette and Courteney Cox. “The first one felt like summer camp and it still feels like summer camp — just we’re a lot more sore after we shoot.”