Full body costumes make it difficult to go to the toilet
When you’re watching a movie and there’s a character with a scary costume that covers the whole body of the actor, you rarely wonder how difficult is to wear it and how hard is when you need to pee.
A recent example is the Netflix series Stranger Things. In the fourth season, the makeup effects for the Vecna character required the actor Jamie Campbell Bower to wear a meticulously crafted costume needing extensive work to apply.
The actor recently revealed there was a “pee flap” built into the Vecna costume to make the procedure go a little more smoothly, though wasn’t without difficulties, given the number of hours he had to spend in the suit to film his sequences.
“The bottom half of the suit, sort of waist-down, they’re like a pair of trousers that I have to slip on. Everything else is glued, but the bottom half are trousers, and I have like a flap that like, this f*cking flap that goes from the chest, like, underneath my buttcrack”, Bower revealed.
“And it’s like, poor Duncan Jarman, who also fitted the suit on me every day. He’d have to be down there. And if I needed to pee and I have to wear these… I’ve got this big hand. as well, like these huge fingers. Then on the other side, I’ve got nails that are glued on. So I can’t touch anything without everything f*cking falling apart”.
He continued, “So if I need to use the loo, I’m like, ‘Duncan, can you just like unplop me?’ And then there’s like this tiny zip, it’s like crotchless pants. It’s like the whole thing”.
The actor explained how the costume eventually resulted in some embarrassing moments with his coworkers.
“The worst part is like… There’s not a lot of room down there. It’s not very easy”, Bower explained. “And like, I’d have to get Tyler and, shout out to Tyler, if you’re listening, because Tyler would have to stand outside the bathroom door because no one else could come in because I’m like hovering over the urinal. It’s like a whole thing. Oh, my God. The shame is so real right now”.
Bower admitted that he frequently held it in longer than he probably should have since he knew how difficult it would be to simply use the restroom.
“There was only one day where like, you know when you’re a kid and you are waiting for something and you need to pee, and you’re like, maybe this is just me, maybe I’m projecting here. If there’s anyone else out there who’s experienced this, please just let me know because it’ll be nice not to feel so alone”, the actor joked.
“When you’re a kid and you’re waiting, but you need to pee and you’re like, ‘I should just wait, I’ll just wait. I’ll just wait.’ And it just gets worse and worse and worse to the point where you’re like, ‘I just gotta f*cking pee now. Like, I gotta run away.’ That only happened one time on set. I can’t remember who I was working with, I think it was with Sadie Sink, who plays Max, and we’d done so much great work and the camera was on me and [directors] Matt and Ross [Duffer] were like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I was like, ‘No, I got a pee so bad.’ But it takes like 15 minutes for the whole thing to happen. So I felt… I didn’t wanna break anyone. I felt really bad”.
The next time you’re too scared by a monster, imagine how it could pee.
