Actress gets goofy on painkillers in 'Peg

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Jaime King broke her tailbone filming in the city. (PETER KRAMER / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Actress Jaime King says she may have literally busted her butt filming a stunt on the set of Mother's Day, the horror thriller currently filming in Winnipeg.

In a guest blog posted Friday morning on the Los Angeles Times website, King says she had to go to the hospital after filming a fight scene earlier this week in which her character Beth has a knock-down drag-out fight with one of the film's villains.

King says she watched a stunt double do the "hard falls" before deciding to try the stunts herself.

"Like every other paranoid perfectionist actor, (I) decide I am the only one who can do the action the way it really needs to be done," King wrote.

Subsequently, King said she did six different takes for the fight scene "during which my body feels nothing.

"First I knocked my head, then my knee swelled up, then I popped my wrist out and, lo and behold, after the final shot ... I can't walk," King wrote.

King was taken to the hospital by producer Richard Saperstein and stunt co-ordinator Bobby King, where, she says, she was "forced to get hopped up on painkillers just to cut the agonizing pain.

"Turns out, I fractured my tailbone on the third day of filming," King said, succinctly summing up the experience as a "bummer."

"When the Percocet kicked in, I felt a level of intoxication that would put Cheech and Chong to shame," King continued. "I then proceeded to make a slew of raunchy jokes that just sort of tumbled from my lips in a dirty and uncontrollable way.

"I am lucky to still have a job let alone be considered a lady after this impromptu comedy routine. I remember one particularly crude exchange; the nurse came in to give me a shot in the butt and said 'I'm going to poke you with this,' but promised she wouldn't push it in all the way. To which I replied 'Oh, don't worry, I've had worse down there.' But it wasn't quite phrased like that. Groan."

King said after leaving the hospital, they "made a pit stop at the local A&W, where (King's friend Sara) got me to eat a whole double cheeseburger and french fries ... probably in an attempt to sober me up."

At the end of the blog, King vows: "I will continue to film, sitting on an inner tube but without a river, without the sun, and without a bottle of Boone's."

Mother's Day, a remake of a 1981 exploitation movie, is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II) and also stars Rebecca De Mornay, Briana Evigan, Shawn Ashmore and the recently announced Andrew Bryniarski, the actor who played Leatherface in the rebooted Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 19, 2009 C10