Anyone but You: Glen Powell almost died making the romantic comedy by taking his pants off too fast

Do we need to get Glen Powell some lessons in stripping for Christmas? According to the Top Gun: Maverick actor, he nearly died at the top of a cliff while taking his pants off for a hilarious scene in the upcoming romantic comedy Anyone but You. In the scene, Powell pulls a giant spider from inside his shorts, then strips down to the buff to ensure there aren’t more creepy crawlies skittering toward his junk.

“You just have to grip it and rip it on a scene like that,” Powell told Variety at the Anyone but You premiere in New York Monday night, pointing to the moment he frantically strips naked in front of his co-star Sydney Sweeney. “You know you’re not going to leave that filming day looking cool, so you just have to embrace it.”

“Taking your clothes off on the side of a cliff in a hurry is not safe either,” Powell warns. “Nobody talks about that safety issue on set, where I almost died falling off a cliff taking my pants off too fast. But it’s a really fun scene, so it was all worth it.”

Powell isn’t the only star of Anyone but You wrestling with arachnophobia. While filing the same scene, Sweeney says her arachnid co-star bit her.

“There’s the spider itself, which actually bit me, and that was a whole thing,” Sweeney recalled. “And then we have the part of Glen bending over and me checking to see if there are more spiders.”

That’s what you get for filming in Australia, I guess. I’ve been there, and while I didn’t encounter any nightmare insects, others who live there shared lots of stories about animals and insects invading their home daily. They proudly showed me pictures on their phones, with some spiders the size of a serving platter! Eff that noise!

In Anyone but You, Sweeney and Powell’s characters hate each other so much they can’t help but fall for one another. The story unfolds in Sydney, Australia, and follows the couple as they experience a variety of vacation-related mishaps, including falling from boats and discovering spiders down their pants. Have you seen the spiders in Australia? Oh, the horror! Alexandra Shipp, GaTa, Dermot Mulroney, Rachel Griffiths, Michelle Hurd, Bryan Brown, Darren Barnet, and Hadley Robinson join the project as cast members.

Joe Roth, Jeff Kirschenbaum, and Gluck are producing, with Sweeney executive producing via Fifty-Fifty Films alongside Natalie Sellers, Alyssa Altman, and Jacqueline Monetta. Natalie Sellers and Alyssa Altman serve as executive producers through RK Films. Gluck and Ilana Wolpert wrote the screenplay.

Anyone but You hits theaters on December 22.