How Monster used some seriously grim tricks to film *that* Lizzie Borden vomiting scene

If there’s one scene in Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story that you’ll probably wish you could unsee, it’s the dinner from hell.

While the show has plenty of gruesome moments, it’s a particularly disgusting dinner scene that has been hard to forget. In the episode “Strong Kitty”, Abby and Andrew sit down for a meal of oysters. It doesn’t take long for things to go spectacularly wrong.

Via Netflix

After eating the oysters, Abby suddenly becomes unwell before projectile vomiting bright orange sick. What follows is essentially a bodily-fluid disaster, complete with vomiting and explosive diarrhoea.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t entirely invented for the Netflix series. Two days before Abby and Andrew Borden were murdered, the married couple became seriously ill. It wasn’t just the pair who were affected, either. Andrew’s brother-in-law John V. Morse and the family’s live-in maid Bridget Sullivan also became sick.

The illness was bad enough that Abby saw a doctor the following morning and reportedly expressed concerns that someone had poisoned the family. Doctors and authorities later traced the sickness to swordfish and mutton broth which had been prepared days earlier and improperly stored in the pantry.

Netflix’s version takes some significant creative liberties with what caused the illness, though. The scene is seriously graphic, and director Max Winkler admitted the team had to do plenty of preparation to work out exactly how they were going to pull it off.

Via Netflix

“The gold standard for this is will always be ‘Triangle of Sadness. We will never be as good as ‘Triangle of Sadness,’” Winkler told The Wrap, referring to Ruben Östlund’s black comedy.

The Monster team used practical effects to create the horrifying results, with both Hall and Hunnam wearing tubes that allowed the prop team to pump sickly orange liquid through them.

The cast and crew also completed a dry run before unleashing the fake vomit and diarrhoea.

“That was a very messy, difficult day, but I am very pleased with how it turned out. Jack Price — our editor on that episode, was incredible in finding the musicality of it all,” Winkler said.

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And then there was one particular moment that apparently went beyond even South Park levels of grossness.

“A complete ‘South Park’ moment is when Charlie s**ts himself, and we literally zoom into his trousers. That is beyond ‘South Park,’” Winkler said, adding that he is “obsessed” with Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s show.

For Hunnam, being covered in fake vomit and diarrhoea for an entire day was every bit as grim as you’d imagine.

Via Netflix

The actor told Entertainment Weekly that he’s “kind of a germaphobe”, making the scene particularly unpleasant to film.

“It seemed like it was gonna require being very, very uncomfortable and, you know, I’m kind of a germaphobe,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “So even if it’s fake vomit, being covered head to toe in vomit and diarrhea for the day did not seem like a particularly enjoyable experience. And indeed it wasn’t.”

Winkler explained that the practical effects had to be carefully tested before the cast went anywhere near the full version of the scene.

“We do everything once as a dry run without the vomit. So everybody’s faking it,” said Winkler. “Then we do tubes, which we have to do many tests and figure out what’s the distance, what’s too crazy, what’s just crazy enough, what’s too small.

“Then we start with them putting stuff in their mouth and just doing that version of it.”

I don’t think I’ll be eating oysters anytime soon.

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Featured image via Netflix