‘9-1-1’: Ryan Murphy Talks Filming Terrifying Roller Coaster Emergency

9-1-1 emergencies keep getting crazier with each new episode.

On Wednesday’s brand new episode, the team of first responders were tasked with helping a man hanging from a roller coaster, an emergency that, as Ryan Murphy told Entertainment Weekly, happens all the time.

“It seems to happen every summer where there’s a malfunction at a state fair and people are thrown from out of these roller coasters that aren’t regulated,” Murphy said. “In the case of many of them, they die tragic deaths. So we wanted to show that.

Murphy said that, while the emergency looked good on paper, the stunt was actually a nightmare to shoot.

“We had to shoot it three times,” he said. “We had to shoot a real roller coaster. Then we had to build the roller coaster in a soundstage against a green screen. So we had all of these actors on our roller coaster we made hang upside down for hours and we had to take breaks. Then, we had to shoot the stunts of what happens when you’re tossed out of a roller coaster. What does that feel like? What does that look like? So we had to do three different components and it was very tricky but truly adrenalized filmmaking and that was exciting to do.”

9-1-1 airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on FOX.

Photo Credit: FOX / Richard Foreman