LL Cool J recalls nearly drowning from animatronic shark while filming Deep Blue Sea

With the release of the new tongue-in-cheek animal attack schlock comedy, Cocaine Bear, it’s a great time to revisit one of the most beloved “so bad, it’s good” shark attack movies. The 1999 film Deep Blue Sea is coveted for many reasons. Not only does it feature a notorious scene with star Samuel L. Jackson getting suddenly getting killed off by a CGI shark amidst an inspirational speech, but it also spawned perhaps the best rap song about sharks ever made by rapper and star LL Cool J.

According to ScreenRant, Ladies Love Cool James recently appeared on the latest episode of Hot Ones, the popular talk show from First We Feast that features celebrity guests eating progressively hotter chicken wings as they get interviewed. During the program, as his tongue got destroyed by the sauces, LL recalled a moment filming the shark movie where he nearly drowned due to the mechanical shark. Host Sean Evans asked him about that incident, where the rapper explained,

“Thousand percent true. I was on the set, I was probably number 479 on the call sheet. I was in the middle of a take and [someone called] ‘Lunch!’ The guy holding the little joystick, [he goes], ‘Pastrami!’ and they just bailed on me. And there I was [mimes drowning]. It was, like, real. And they gave me this little breathing apparatus and you blow out and breathe in. I blew out, breathed in all water, took it to another level. I ended up struggling, getting out, and when I climbed out, there was one dude sitting there with a cigarette like, ‘[laughs] I saw what happened.’”

Deep Blue Sea was a high profile shark movie in the wake of the Jaws series; after that franchise devolved into schlock itself, where the main sell was that the sharks were more dangerous than the normal breed of great whites as the became more intelligent, faster, and bigger in general. The film was directed by Renny Harlin, who had helmed such hits as Die Hard 2, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, and The Long Kiss Goodnight. It sported a cast including Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, Michael Rapaport, Samuel L. Jackson and LL Cool J. The movie “follows a team of scientists who are besieged in their facility by a group of genetically-modified sharks while attempting to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.”