William Shatner played a big prank on director Richard Donner during the production of THE TWILIGHT ZONE

It seems that William Shatner he always had a fun and playful sense of humor. Even in the early 1960s, the actor was stressing the creative team out of his wits with his hijinks.

Shatner worked with the director Richard Donner on one of the most popular episodes of Rod Serling’S The twilight zone“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” It was not an easy shoot for Donner as the production was plagued with problems. One of the challenging aspects of the series was the plane, which had to be lifted off the ground to make it look like it was actually flying. Donner explained:

“It was a difficult shot. It was a plane… in a tank, lifted off the ground. We had to climb. We had huge wind machines. We had lightning machines. We had rain machines. We had effects machines and it worked because we also had to turn on the engines. There were no computers or anything to do it. Everything had to be live. Everything had to be synchronized.”

With the stress on Donner running high, Shatner thought it would be a great time to prank the director. That prank was to make Donner believe that Shatner had fallen and died! Shatner collaborated with Edd Byrnes on the prank. That day, while visiting the set to say hello to his wife, Asa Maynor, who played the flight attendant in the episode, Shatner and Byrnes noticed an articulated mannequin on the set, and from there the idea was born.

In an interview with the Academy Television Foundation, Donner shared his experience as the prank unfolded:

“I hear this yelling and screaming and everything, I run back and see [Byrnes and Shatner] combative. And then they went behind the body of the plane, and all of a sudden, I saw Shatner fall off the wing and fall all the way to the bottom – it’s concrete – and hit the ground. […] I thought he was dead, man. And I came running and grabbed it, and then everyone just stood there laughing.”

What a horrible but amazing joke! Shatner and Byrnes had planned the entire fight on the wing of the plane which led to Byrnes pushing the dummy away just as Donner was watching them. Donner seriously thought that Shatner was dead and that filming was already so stressful, that what went through Donner’s mind was:

“Honestly, my first reaction was, ‘Don’t tell me I have to reshoot the whole show.’”

The only thing that mattered to him at that moment wasn’t Shatner’s well-being, but the fact that he didn’t want to have to reshoot the entire show! I love these types of stories!

Via: /Film