Yahoo News Exclusive: Cocaine Bear cast recall the weirdest on-set moments with fake bear
The cast of Cocaine Bear have opened up about some of the strangest moments working on set with the movie's fake bear.
The upcoming film is very loosely based on the story of a bear that accidentally consumed a number of bags of cocaine after the drugs were ditched by a smuggler.
The movie turns events into an action flick, which of course required the actors to work with a fake bear on set – more specifically a performer named Allan Henry who stood in for the animal.
Related: Alden Ehrenreich pays tribute to late Cocaine Bear co-star Ray Liotta
"Allan [Henry] was great and we got real close and we got into each others' parts of our bodies," star Alden Ehrenreich exclusively told Digital Spy of a scene where the bear lays on top of him. "All those parts and all the smells, and it was nice.
"That was definitely one of the craziest moments, but what's fun is that our characters are also experiencing this as a crazy moment. So every time we're going, 'What the f**k', we really get to go, 'What the f**k'," he added.
Fellow star O'Shea Jackson Jr compared it to The Revenant, which famously featured a brutal bear mauling: "You know when The Revenant was coming out and it was like, 'Yeah Leo, pretty much the bear dominates Leo'. We really took it there."
Related: Elizabeth Banks jokes that Cocaine Bear could be a "career ender"
Ehrenreich went on to joke that Cocaine Bear is "the unofficial sequel to The Revenant".
"There's no laughs in The Revenant [laughs]," Jackson Jr noted. "There's Smokey the bear, we've got Cokey the bear. Allan, it's just funny to call him Allan when he's dressed up."
Ehrenreich also revealed that Allan also "had a trailer and it just said 'bear' on the trailer", which frankly sounds amazing.
Related: Keri Russell says husband Matthew Rhys asked for Cocaine Bear role
Speaking of her top moment from production, star Keri Russell revealed: "My favourite, truly, is when we were doing giant close-ups for these huge action sequences when someone's face is being eaten off.
"It was just [director Elizabeth Banks] in place of the bear, on a microphone deep in the woods by the monitors going, 'OK, and now his leg's being ripped off and blood's squirting all over his face and then his torso just flew out of the tree and blood squirted on you', so that was highly enjoyable as well."
Cocaine Bear is out in cinemas on February 24.
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