While filming, actors often find themselves in unusual situations, such as performing a stunt or wearing a complicated costume. Sometimes, these circumstances lead to accidental injuries, and oftentimes, production has to figure out how to work an actor’s injury into the show.
Here are 17 actors who got injured while filming popular TV shows:
Here’s a closer look at her “summer muff”:
2.
While filming the Friends episode “The One Where No One’s Ready,” Matt LeBlanc dislocated his shoulder.
He told Jimmy Kimmel Live, “I did a few episodes in a sling. And they wrote it into the show as Joey was jumping on the bed.”
3.
While performing a stunt for the second episode of The Veil, Elisabeth Moss fractured a vertebra. In 2024, she told Variety, “The [scene] you see in the show is actually the second time we shot it, about six weeks later. The first time we shot it, I hit a wall the wrong way, let’s just say, and ended up lying on the roof for a couple hours.”
4.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas did her own stunts for Quantico, which led to a small accident in 2017. On Live with Kelly, she said, “I hit my head on the bumper of a car and then on the floor.”
5.
In the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 11 finale, Danny DeVito nearly drowned filming an underwater scene. His costar Charlie Day told Conan, “We almost killed him this year. We almost drowned him.”
Charlie said that, after Danny was rescued, he “went straight home.”
6.
In 2009, Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay told RedBook, “On October 16 [2008], I was doing a stunt chasing a bad guy. I’d always insisted on doing the stunts my own way, although I don’t feel so strongly about that anymore. I jumped and landed on pads, but on the second take something happened — I just landed wrong. I got up and felt that something inside was not quite right. At first I thought I had the wind knocked out of me. I was angry with myself. Later, I thought maybe I’d pulled a muscle, but I didn’t focus on the injury and kept expecting it to get better.”
7.
In 2019, Ronda Rousey had a “freak accident” while filming 9-1-1. On Instagram, she said, “First take of the day a boat door fell on my hand, I thought I just jammed my fingers so I finished the take before looking (I know it sounds crazy, but I’m used to live audiences and never showing pain unless I’m supposed to).”
8.
When Michelle Williams appeared on The Masked Singer, a special effect malfunctioned during rehearsals. She got electrocuted, which split one of her boots open.
9.
In 2012, Kristin Chenoweth was severely injured on the set of The Good Wife. A decade later, in an essay for the book My Moment: 106 Women on Fighting for Themselves, she wrote, “As I stood on my mark, awaiting the next shot, a piece of lighting equipment crashed down on top of me and knocked me back into a curb. I was rushed by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. My injuries were severe. My ribs were cracked. My nose and some of my teeth were broken, and I had a skull fracture. And those were just the injuries that actually showed up on X-rays; never mind the nerve, tissue, and muscle damage I’d have to face in the weeks, months, and years that followed.”
10.
During the Riverdale Season 1 finale scene where Archie saves Cheryl from drowning in a frozen river, KJ Apa broke his hand. He told TVLine, “That was a gnarly day of shooting, I’ll tell you that much. I wasn’t really punching the ice, but I got a little bit too excited. I was punching a foam mat … [that was] sitting on the ice. … It was cold, so I didn’t really feel it. It wasn’t until 20 minutes after that I realized I broke my hand.”
11.
While filming Cowboy Bebop in 2019, John Cho tore his ACL, which led to a months-long production shutdown. In 2021, he told Vulture, “It was real wonky. We had been shooting all night, and I was doing kind of an athletic move as the sun was coming up. It was probably a lack of sleep. Just a little move and [I was down]. So that was a low moment. It was 5:30 Saturday morning when I arrived at the emergency room, and it was filled with people who had gotten super drunk on Friday night and then got in a fight or fell and cracked their heads open. Ironically, a sobering experience.”
12.
In a 2013 Reddit AMA about Breaking Bad, Aaron Paul said, “Raymond Cruz, who played Tuco, gave me a concussion during the episode ‘Grilled,’ where Tuco takes Walt and Jesse to his shack in the middle of nowhere where we meet the famous [Hector Salamanca]. Tuco takes Jesse, and he throws him through the screen door outside, and if you watch it back, you’ll notice that my head gets caught inside the wooden screen door, and it flips me around and lands me on my stomach, and the door splinters into a million pieces. Raymond just thought I was acting, so he continued and kicked me in the side and picked me up over his shoulder and threw me against the house, but in reality, I was pretty much unconscious the [entire] time.”
13.
Jared Padalecki broke his wrist while filming Supernatural Season 2, Episode 3, “Bloodlust.” During a fan Q&A, he explained, “There was a scene where I get hit on the back of the head with a telephone. And I walk into a motel room, and I walk this way, and I sense something behind me. And so I turn, and there’s a vampire, and I punch the vampire, but another one has come up behind me with a telephone and smacks me on the back of the head. So, as I fell, they’re holding the camera there, and I fell, and I acted like I was passed out. At the last second, I kinda put my hand out to the side to catch myself…because the stuntman I had just ‘knocked out’ was there in front of me. So I put my hand out to catch myself, but the angle was incorrect, and so I snapped my wrist bone.”
His injury was written into the show. Series creator Eric Kripke told TV Guide, “We’re making it work. Luckily, he gets in fights every episode so it is easy for him to break his hand. It turns out the zombie breaks his hand.”
15.
And after Peter Calapdi took over the role of the Doctor on Doctor Who, he got the exact same knee injury as Matt Smith while performing stunts.
16.
While filming Game of Thrones Season 7, Episode 6, Rory McCann damaged his knees. He told the Sydney Morning Herald, “I had this guy on my shoulder for days and days – it didn’t work with a dummy, so I had to carry a real guy, and we had to run and run.”
17.
And finally, during 11 seasons of The Walking Dead, Norman Reedus was hurt numerous times, including whiplash, multiple black eyes, a forehead injury requiring stitches, injuries to his knee and shoulder, and a concussion that temporarily shut down production.