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Here's what it was like filming with all those tarantulas during Kingdom of the Spiders
William Shatner filmed multiple takes of one scene with a tarantula stuck to his face!
A fear of spiders is pretty normal, sometimes even healthy. What do they need all those legs for, anyhow?
But William Shatner was able to face every person's deepest fear when he starred in Kingdom of the Spiders, and he did it relatively easily.
Contrary to other films that rely on props, Kingdom of the Spiders used real animals during their shoot, according to Shatner.
"They were real tarantulas all right," said Shatner during an interview with The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Of course, there's always some level of fear involved when working with live animals. Because Shatner had to handle live tarantulas, there was a possibility that he could be bitten. Luckily, the crew was able to take proper precautions in order to keep the actors as safe as possible.
"There was an entomologist on the set," said Shatner. "We called him our spider wrangler. He taught us that not all tarantulas are poisonous. If the ones we used got you, it would be more painful than a bee sting, but not deadly...I never got stung. These creatures are more timid than most of us believe."
Though Shatner was never unlucky enough to deal with a spider bite, there were certainly plenty of opportunities for him to get up close and personal with a few furry friends.
"There is one shot where I am covered with tarantulas and come staggering into a room," said the actor. "I had an idea for that shot, and the director used it in the picture. What I did was stick this big tarantula on my face with spirit gum. Then I fell into the shot just as I hit my camera mark. My idea was to shoot a close-up of this thing crawling on my face, just to vitiate anyone saying, 'Oh, he's using fake spiders.' Well, it worked. But I kept getting too much or too little spirit gum, so we had to shoot the scene six times."
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