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#Hot dogs, stunts, and injuries: ‘The Office’ cast dishes on filming ‘Beach Games’

#Hot dogs, stunts, and injuries: ‘The Office’ cast dishes on filming ‘Beach Games’

Image: the office / nbc / netflix

We interrupt your 2020 election anxiety to make a genuinely fantastic suggestion: Stop doomscrolling through social media and doomwatching the news for 28 minutes and watch the “Beach Games” episode of The Office instead.

On the latest episode of the , Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey chatted about the delightful Season 3 episode of the show and reminded us just how jam-packed with comedy it really is.

Hot dogs, stunts, and injuries: 'The Office' cast dishes on filming 'Beach Games'
Image: the office / nbc / netflix

From lighthearted activities such as an egg race, a hot dog eating contest, and a sumo wrestling competition to emotional, serious scenes like Pam’s coal walk and confession to Jim, the episode — which was co-written by Jen Celotta and Greg Daniels — truly delivers.

If you’re looking for a laugh during these stressful times, a “Beach Games” rewatch is highly recommended. But before you immerse yourself in the delightful episode, check out these behind-the-scenes revelations.

1. Filming that disgusting hot dog eating contest 

Remember when Kevin said he just wanted to lay on the beach and eat hot dogs? He got his wish! Sort of. In an effort to choose his next great successor, Michael organized a hot dog eating contest on the beach, and things got pretty gross.

Michael showed up with 800 hot dogs (which Pam may or may not have fully cooked) and Andy won the contest after eating 13 of them. But filming the scenes wasn’t easy.

Hot dogs, stunts, and injuries: 'The Office' cast dishes on filming 'Beach Games'
Image: the office / nbc / netflix

“This was an arduous scene for everyone to shoot,” Kinsey said. “I was really lucky, Jenna, because I said, ‘My character’s a vegetarian. She’s not going to be eating these.’ I made a really big plea about that. But poor Brian, and Ed, [and] Leslie. All those guys were shoving hot dogs in their face.”

The scenes reportedly took so long to film that the guys started gagging, and though there were spit buckets on the beach, they weren’t easy to access.

“On some shows, the way they shoot, you know when you’re on camera. And when you’re off camera, you don’t have to sort of participate. You can kind of not eat,” Kinsey said. “But the way we shot this, there was a huge group shot. There’s a camera that’s capturing everything. So these guys had to eat on every take because they never knew when the camera was specifically on them or not.”

Andy really going for it.
Andy really going for it.

Image: the office / nbc / netflix

When someone would yell “cut” members of the prop department would run the spit buckets over, but on the DVD commentary Ed Helms (Andy) said the buckets didn’t solve his problems.

“He said, ‘First of all, spitting out food that I’ve been chewing and holding in my mouth — the action of spitting out this chewed food — would activate my gag reflex. So I’d start gagging,'” Kinsey shared. “And he said, ‘But then on top of that, this bucket that they would bring around, several other people had spit their food out into.'” 

“They were all getting so grossed out,” she explained.

2. Two real on set injuries

While the hot dog eating scene did sound brutal to shoot, it surprisingly wasn’t the most painful experience on set.

Both Helms and Leslie David Baker (Stanley) sustained real injuries while filming the sumo wrestling scenes.

“What happened was that during all this sumo wrestling, Leslie got sand in his eyes and they tried to flush it out, but they couldn’t,” Fischer explained.

A real trooper.
A real trooper.

Image: the office / nbc / netflix

The sand was so painful that Baker had to leave set and seek medical attention, and it turns out he scratched his cornea. 

“I watched the deleted scenes and there is a moment — it’s not in the episode — where Dwight is wrestling with Stanley and knocks him to the ground and is like, ‘Take that old man.’ And he kind of kicks at the sand. Right?” Kinsey said. “And I think then Rainn felt really bad because he realized in that moment, that’s when we thought it happened.”

Baker eventually returned to set and kept filming, but the sumo scene claimed another victim: Helms.

When Andy and Dwight start fighting each other in the sumo suits, Helms lost a fingernail. Yikes!

“[Wilson] walks over and then they just start going at each other. And Ed is like kind of flailing his arms at him. Somehow in this tussle, Ed broke his fingernail. But he said he broke it really bad, like it ripped,” Kinsey said.

“It was gruesome looking,” Fischer recalled.

Though Helms didn’t leave set he did get his injury wrapped, and the beach games continued.

3. Executing some impressive stunts

Fans may recall that this episode also included two noteworthy stunts. The first, was when the fingernail-missing hot dog king Helms fell into the water and floated away from shore in his sumo suit.

The scenes — one of Helms floating in the daytime and one shot at night — were a challenge to film, but the actor decided not to use a stunt double, so he floated on the water for more than 45 minutes.

Andy floating at night.
Andy floating at night.

Image: the office / nbc / netflix

The second stunt was the hot coal walk, which Pam absolutely mastered. Though the coals weren’t actually hot, Fischer explained that her feet were in genuine pain from walking over the rocky surface so many times.

Due to fire regulations, the team had to get creative when making their beach flames.

“So [director] Harold Ramis talked a little bit about this coal fire pit on the DVD commentary. He said they started, first of all, by digging a big hole in the ground and then they buried in the ground a light box, just a big box that lit up,” Kinsey explained. 

“And then they put on top of the light box these little yellow and orange gels to make it look like a flame. And then on top of those light gels on top of the light box, they put little lava rocks. And then running on either side of this hole in the ground they had put two gas lines with very small little flickers of real fire that popped out,” she continued.

“I’ll say that people have mentioned that I look like my feet really hurt after I walk across the hot coals and they’ve wondered if I really walked on hot coals,” Fischer said. “No, my feet were sore and bruised from having to run across lava rocks over and over again.”

Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for more behind-the-scenes stories about filming “Beach Games.”

You can stream episodes of and follow along with the podcast every week on , , or . 

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