Paul Rudd has described the “awful” process of filming a scene in which he is buried alive for his new Netflix show.
The Avengers star plays two versions of himself in the comedy series Living With Yourself, also featuring Aisling Bea.
The first episode shows one of those versions emerging from a shallow grave, naked apart from a nappy, and Rudd has said it was “the weirdest thing I’ve ever had to film”.
He said: “It was the first week. The way our shooting schedule worked, we were thinking that was when it was going to be the warmest – and it just so happened that there was a cold spell that week and it was awful.
“It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever had to film and it was kind of unexpected. I’m not so claustrophobic really but there is something within us that knows that is not the right thing to experience, to be buried alive.
“I was in an open grave and there was a tube that went underground so that I could breathe.
“I wasn’t buried completely because I had to get out but it was substantial. They would start putting dirt over me and I was like ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like this’ and they would wait until the last minute and then they would put it over my head.”
He added: “We were doing it in a public park but that is the great thing about filming in New York though – somebody coming out of the ground wearing a diaper, that’s the third weirdest thing they’ve seen today.”
Rudd also described the challenge of playing two people, his character Miles and his clone.
He said: “The things that were the most difficult were just technical things like eyelines. If I was doing a scene where I was talking to myself and I’m sitting five feet in front of me, I couldn’t just put a piece of tape on the wall because it would look like I’m looking 20 feet away.
“So making my eyes a little hazier and looking five feet in front of me and matching the eyeline, the technical sides of it were a little challenging.
“But I felt as if I knew, or had a handle at least, on how I wanted to play each character.
“One was not more difficult than the other but I felt different playing each one.
“Playing someone who is just down and out affects my own mood, more than playing someone who is optimistic, and it’s fun playing people who are optimistic because it sinks in a little bit.”
Living With Yourself is on Netflix now.