Brendan Fraser was knocked out cold while filming a scene for his 1999 film “The Mummy.”
The actor, now 54, shared on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” Tuesday that he was shooting a part of the action-adventure movie in which his character, Rick O’Connell, was about to be executed when the incident occurred.
For the scene, Fraser had a rope tied around his neck and was standing on his toes, but then director Stephen Sommers told him, “‘It doesn’t really look like you’re choking. Can you sell it?’”
The “George of the Jungle” star described how in the next take, the man controlling the rope pulled it a bit higher and he had “nowhere to go but down.”
“The next thing I knew, my elbow was in my ear, the world was sideways, and there was gravel in my teeth, and everyone was really quiet,” he recalled, adding that all he could hear as he came back to consciousness was a stunt coordinator calling out his name.
Fraser said the crew member then told him, “‘Congratulations, you’re in the club! The same thing happened to Mel Gibson on ‘Braveheart.’”
The “Whale” star first revealed his near-death experience in 2019, telling Entertainment Weekly at the time that he knew he has not been “fully choked-out,” but it was still “scary.”
Sommers, now 60, then told the magazine that Fraser was to “blame” for the incident.
“He tightens the noose, and then, as we’re about to get the shot, he’s trying to make it look like it’s really strangling him,” the filmmaker claimed. “I guess it cut off his carotid artery, or whatever, and knocked him out.”
Sommers concluded, “He did it to himself.”
Fraser then conceded, “Technically yes, it was my fault, that I was following direction from my director to sell it.”