10 TV Scenes Shot For Real
Bryan Cranston did the iconic pizza throw himself. On the first take.
It's fair to say that TV traditionally has a reputation for being a less-ambitious visual medium compared to film, if only due to the enormous time constraints placed upon most TV productions which need to power through pages and pages of content at a much faster pace.
However, the current Golden Age of TV has basically rubbished that assertion, confirming that small-screen entertainment can contain just as much artistry as anything you'd expect to see on a cinematic canvas.
And to that end, skilled showrunners and directors have blown minds with scenes which, for all intents and purposes, you probably assumed had been shot under extremely artificial, fiercely controlled conditions.
But as it turns out, these 10 scenes were all pulled off "for real," whether a simple yet complex act done without any digital assistance, or a technically mind-boggling scene achieved entirely in-camera without editing tricks or otherwise.
It's a true testament to the artists involved that, whether it's a pizza toss or an amazing single-take scene, we as viewers assumed they just had to be fake...
10. Hannibal Lecter's Egg Trick - Hannibal
In Hannibal's season two episode "MukĊzuke," Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) carries out an astonishingly dexterous cooking trick, throwing an egg up into the air and catching it on the edge of his spatula, causing the yolk to break and fall into the frying pan below.
While most viewers understandably assumed the scene was pulled off with either the help of a CGI egg or a "stunt" double for the close-up shot, it was actually entirely the work of Mikkelsen himself, who pulled it off on the first freaking take no less.
The film's food stylist, Janice Poon, said of Mikkelsen's flawless execution of the tricky task:
"So I called my Japanese food guy and asked for a Benihana chef to bring in for a potential hand double. The next morning, there were two Japanese guys, me, six dozen eggs, and Mads wanders on to the set and asks 'OK, what are we doing?'...I tell him we're doing the Benihana egg trick today, but don't worry because we have these chefs from the Sushi shop, and we're gonna handle it.
So Mads asks what he has to do, and I tell him - you throw the egg up in the air, you stick the spatula out, it breaks slightly, you twist your wrist, then the egg falls down into the pan. He says, 'OK, let me try it.' He goes on set, and he actually did it. I accused him of practicing, but that's when he told me he used to be a juggler."