An actor who almost died on the set of a hit comedy film has opened up on continuing to work despite having a serious allergic reaction.
Alan Tudyk, 53, known for his work in A Knight’s Tale, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and the Star Wars movie, Rogue One, was working alongside comedy legend Robin Williams when he started getting sick. The actor was playing a patient called Everton in the 1998 comedy film Patch Adams. But Tudyk had to be given a shot of adrenaline prior to filming due to a serious allergic reaction caused by a “series of unfortunate events.”
Tudyk opened up on the scary moment during an appearance on Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meal YouTube series where the presenter handed him some chocolate-coated pretzels and asked him to described what happened in the late 1990s.
“Tell me about how this led to a series of unfortunate, maybe fortunate events early in your acting career,” the host asked Tudyk.
The actor spoke of how he had eaten a “bad Chinese meal” one night and then, the following day, ate a bunch of chocolate and drank scotch to celebrate landing the role on Patch Adams.
“That was our whole dinner,” Tudyk said of the chocolate and liquor combination.
“Then I went to the set next day, and my windpipe started closing up when I was in the makeup chair,” Tudyk said. He added how he was “having trouble breathing and hives were all over my neck and they were going all over my scalp and they were just running all over my system.”
Alan Tudyk smiles onstage at New York Comic Con 2024 on October 20, 2024. The actor spoke about having an allergic reaction on set.
Jason Mendez/Getty Images
A medic on set came to see him and told Tudyk: “You’re going to die. You’re going to suffocate from that.”
He was rushed to a doctor who gave him a shot of adrenaline and then Tudyk was taken back to set, where he had to play an “insane person with Robin Williams.”
“If you watch the scene, it’s right in the first few minutes of the movie. You can tell how the drug starts to wear off, because, in the beginning, my eyes are truly, like, rolling back in my head,” Tudyk added.
He also spoke about the terrifying incident in 2019 with online newspaper and entertainment website The AV Club and described how exciting it was to work with Williams at the age of 26 in the first role in his career.
“Everything was brand-new. There’s craft service. And there’s Robin Williams. There was Robin Williams. I was in San Francisco staying in a nice hotel. My girlfriend came to visit—like, ‘You got to come be part of this! It’s too great!’ And she brought me chocolates, which is the last thing you should eat when you have hives.
“The doctor’s like, ‘Whatever you do, don’t have any brown liquors or chocolate.’ I’m like, ‘You just described my dinner,'” Tudyk said.
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