I was sitting down for a late-career documentary interview a few years ago, and the young director asked me a very simple question.
He wanted to know about the absolute funniest day we ever had on the set of the show.
People usually expect me to tell a story about one of the elaborate practical jokes we played on each other, or perhaps a legendary piece of ad-libbed dialogue that made it into the final cut.
But my mind instantly went to a sweltering afternoon during the middle of our run, and a completely unscripted moment of pure, agonizing physical comedy.
We were filming a highly dramatic, intense operating room scene.
The script called for absolute, life-or-death seriousness.
To understand the joke, you have to understand a specific behind-the-scenes secret about our props.
The fake blood we used on the show was famously made out of a mixture of clear Karo corn syrup and dark red food coloring.
It looked incredibly realistic on camera, but it was also incredibly thick, sticky, and overwhelmingly sweet.
On this particular afternoon, the heavy studio doors on Stage 9 had been propped open to let in some air because the massive theatrical lights were baking us alive.
Alan Alda, Loretta Swit, and I were standing around the operating table, fully scrubbed in.
We had our surgical masks pulled up tight and our rubber gloves snapped on securely.
In the medical scenes, you have to maintain absolute sterility, which meant keeping our hands held up rigidly in the air between our chests and our shoulders.
The director called for quiet.
The cameras rolled, and Alan began to deliver a very heavy, deeply technical monologue about the wounded soldier on our table.
The tension in the room was palpable.
And that’s when it happened.
A massive, wildly aggressive yellowjacket wasp flew straight onto the soundstage, entirely lured in by the overwhelming, sugary scent of the Karo syrup.
It didn’t just buzz around the ceiling.
It made a direct dive-bomb straight for the operating table, landing right in the middle of our prop patient’s chest.
Under normal circumstances, you would simply swat the thing away and move on.
But we were in the middle of a perfect take, and we were supposed to be sterile army surgeons.
If any of us dropped our hands to swat the wasp, we would technically break sterility.
That would mean ruining the take, stopping production, getting new rubber gloves, re-applying the fake blood, and wasting valuable filming time.
So, as well-trained, dedicated professionals, we all collectively decided to just ignore it.
Alan didn’t miss a beat.
He kept right on delivering his heartbreaking medical dialogue.
But the wasp wasn’t content with the prop patient.
It took off from the table and began slowly, menacingly circling Alan’s face.
I was standing directly across from him, watching this tiny yellow insect hover inches from his eyes.
Alan’s deep, theatrical concentration completely fractured.
He tried to keep his head perfectly still, but his eyes crossed completely as he tracked the wasp hovering right over the bridge of his nose.
Because his hands were locked in the air, his only line of defense was his own breath.
In the middle of a deeply serious sentence about clamping an artery, Alan suddenly jutted his lower jaw out and tried to blow the wasp away with a violent, upward puff of air.
It made a ridiculous, sputtering sound that echoed loudly through the silent soundstage.
The wasp casually ignored the windstorm, drifted over the table, and landed right on the edge of Loretta Swit’s surgical mask.
Loretta went completely rigid.
Her eyes widened in absolute terror, but she adamantly refused to drop her sterile hands.
She just stood there, vibrating with panic, letting out a tiny, high-pitched hum of distress from the back of her throat.
I was trying desperately to stay in character, but the sight of Alan blowing upward like a whale and Loretta humming like a tuning fork completely broke me.
My shoulders started to bounce uncontrollably.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper, but a loud, muffled snort escaped my mask anyway.
The camera operator, who had a perfectly framed tight shot of Alan’s crossed eyes, finally lost his battle as well.
He started laughing so hard that he had to physically step back from the eyepiece.
The heavy camera violently shook on its mount, completely ruining the cinematic framing.
The director finally yelled cut, his voice cracking with laughter from across the room.
The moment we heard the word cut, all of our sterile training went completely out the window.
Alan, Loretta, and I immediately started waving our arms around like windmills, swatting at the air and scrambling backward away from the operating table.
The entire professional crew erupted into absolute hysterics.
We had grips, lighting technicians, and sound engineers doubled over, weeping with laughter at the sight of three highly paid Hollywood actors being completely terrorized by one single insect.
We had to halt production and wait for the prop department to literally hunt the wasp down with a rolled-up script.
We tried to reset and shoot the scene again, but the damage was permanently done.
Every single time Alan started to deliver that serious medical line, I would instinctively picture his crossed eyes, and I would completely fall apart.
We ruined four consecutive takes because the entire cast had caught an incurable case of the giggles.
What was supposed to be the most dramatic moment of the episode turned into a complete shutdown of a major television production.
Looking back on it now, those ridiculous, chaotic filming incidents are the moments I hold closest to my heart.
The show dealt with such heavy, exhausting subject matter every single week.
If we hadn’t been forced to laugh at the absolute absurdity of our own environment, the emotional weight of the series would have completely crushed us.
That single wasp gave us the exact release valve we desperately needed that afternoon.
Funny how the things that completely ruin a professional moment end up being your favorite memories decades later.
