Still of Ben Hauck as Barrett in a deleted scene from Episode 12 (“There Are Twigs in My Urine”) of Monsters Inside Me (Season 8)
No, there weren’t twigs in my urine — but there was leishmania in my system!
Or rather, my character’s system.
Silliness aside, my episode of Animal Planet’s Monsters Inside Me was very real. It was the season finale of Season 8 (Episode 12), which debuted on December 17, 2017. In the opening story, I played Barrett, as in Barrett Orteg, a real and very able-bodied American man who was unknowingly infected with a dangerous bacterium when bitten by sandflies in Peru. (To show you just how real his affliction is, visit his GoFundMe page and please donate to his recovery.)
While I didn’t know Barrett, it was my job to portray him for this episode. We shot this on August 17 and 18, 2017, in New Jersey. The challenges of this acting job included reading snippets of transcripts Barrett did with his significant other Tammy, and piecing together the details that influenced his mental state throughout the story. Oh, yeah, and did I say? Also portraying it all wordlessly.
You see, as the director Jason Fisher pointed out to us, you can’t even mouth words for Monsters Inside Me. All emotion and even conversation is done simply with expression and narration. For all the times that I joked that you never really get acting training for background acting, acting wordlessly and without moving your mouth should be at least one acting class at school!
These were two exciting days of shooting. It had been a while since I’d had such a lead and focal role. Jason shot many of these scenes in one to two takes, which I was familiar with in working with him before on my episode of Momsters: When Moms Go Bad. On occasion a B-camera unit shot some of the scenes I was in. An embarrassing amount of my wardrobe is my own clothes, which makes me want to rethink my current wardrobe. Oh, and I had special effects makeup applied to my legs and right arm!
The wrist makeup got more and more gruesome as the shoot progressed. In fact, it was so gruesome that the actress playing Tammy (Ruth Solorzano) dared me to send my parents the photo of my wrist at perhaps its goriest. The next morning, I got a very concerned phone call from my parents telling me to see a doctor. Boy, did I have fun relieving them of their concern!
Here’s a condensed reel of my work from the episode, in case you’re curious. It’s a little choppy but you’ll get the picture. The full episode is available on Amazon and other places for purchase.
Links
Animal Planet’s page on Monsters Inside Me »
Purchase Episode 12 (“There Are Twigs in My Urine”) on Amazon »
