Ben Affleck recently told Fox 32 Chicago that he had food poisoning while shooting his emotional goodbye scene with Bruce Willis in the 1998 disaster blockbuster “Armageddon.”
“When we shot that scene, I had food poisoning,” Affleck said. “I wasn’t an experienced enough actor at that point to know that you can just pick up the phone and be like, ‘I’m too sick to work today.’ I’m like, ‘I better come in.’ So I went and I was literally, it’s the only time it’s ever happened in my life, vomiting between takes.”
Affleck added with a laugh that his distressed state “probably made the scene better.”
The scene in question saw oil man A.J. Frost, played by Affleck, say goodbye to “deep core” oil driller Harry Stamper, played by Willis, as he sacrifices himself to manually detonate a bomb to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
Directed by Michael Bay, other cast members included Billy Bob Thornton, Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi, William Fichtner, Owen Wilson and Michael Clarke Duncan.
Affleck recalled seeing Buscemi at the premiere of his new Netflix film “The Rip,” which he said flooded his mind with memories of the film.
He said, “I actually saw Steve Buscemi last night at the premiere for ‘The Rip,’ and we were reminiscing about that movie and thinking about how that was the weirdest, kind of wonderful, strange, otherworldly movie experience.”