Carla Gugino Explains How She Filmed the Most Brutal Scene in ‘Gerald’s Game’

The plot of the latest Stephen King adaptation Gerald’s Game found lead actress Carla Gugino handcuffed to a bed for long periods of time. The physical and mental discomfort of the performer to shoot the film was nothing compared to the difficulties of shooting one of the movie’s final scenes, which involved an incredibly elaborate and gory special effect, which the actress claims “was all completely worth it.”

***WARNING: Spoilers below for Gerald’s Game***

In the film, Jessie (Gugino) finds herself handcuffed to a bed during a sexual encounter with her husband Gerald (Bruce Greenwood), only for an accident to result in him laying unresponsive on the floor. After realizing she had no hope of anyone coming to unlock her from her restraints, Jessie manages to break a glass and use a shard to lacerate the skin around her wrist enough to use the blood as lubricant to slide free from the cuffs.

“It was technically challenging because when we wanted shots of my hand and face together, and there were quite a few of those, we had to have the cuff tight enough so that it didn’t look like it was easy to pull out of it,” Gugino told Bloody Disgusting. “So we basically did it as tight as I could handle it which meant that it was really painful but could actually get through so it was a brutal sequence to perform.”

The effect in the film is incredibly convincing, and, compared to the lack of gore throughout much of the film, resulted in a jarring effect on the viewer.

“They did such an amazing job with that prosthetic,” Gugino pointed out. “It was all completely worth it. I’m not interested in hurting myself or, you know, looking for abuse that I don’t need to go through, but also with something like this you can’t really be too soft on yourself. It was just about getting in there and really going for it and seeing what we could get away with and how much I could handle.”

The sequence lasted merely moments on screen, with Gugino explaining it took hours to get the sequence to look just right.

“There was a lot of sweat and blood in that whole section, but I think our hand stuff took maybe a day or two,” the actress noted. “I think I put it on twice.”

Gerald’s Game is currently streaming on Netflix.