Pastors beware! If you’re a clergyman and you’re thinking of letting a film crew into your home or office, be prepared for the odd bit of property damage – at least if the film stars Hugh Dancy, the star of this summer’s acclaimed romantic drama Adam.
In the film, Dancy plays a man with a form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome, and in one scene he throws a fit that causes him to get a bit violent with the furniture – and apparently Dancy got so carried away that he accidentally kicked his foot through an antique cabinet.
Writer-director Max Mayer tells WENN: “It was actually the pastor’s apartment in the church on the Upper West Side (in Manhattan). That was awful because from my standpoint with our limited budget we were using somebody’s house and I had pointed out to Hugh things that he could destroy and the things he couldn’t, which included this antique cabinet, and he put his foot through it on the first take. I’m thinking, ‘How much is that gonna cost? Can I cut a scene out tomorrow to make up for it?'”
Dancy himself describes what happened this way: “I was kind of roused and I put my foot through a piece of furniture – I slammed my foot through the front of a cabinet. I felt even though everybody was quiet because we were filming, an even greater hush descended on the room and it dawned on me that the furniture belonged to the person whose house we were using.”
Fortunately, says Mayer, it all seems to have worked out in the end: “The family was fantastic and we mended the cabinet, so, as far as I know, they weren’t unhappy with us. They got some new colours on their walls.”