Turns out learning how to hold her breath underwater for seven minutes wasn’t the most harrowing adventure for Kate Winslet as an actress — it was performing on stage and being totally convinced she had “made a poo.”
While appearing on “The Graham Norton Show” Friday, the “Avatar: The Way of Water” actress recalled being on stage in Manchester, England, in a production of “What the Butler Saw” by Joe Orton when she was 18 years old and, in mid-scene, she was absolutely certain she had relieved herself.
In the play, Winslet played a character named Geraldine who goes to apply for a job of a doctor’s secretary and is told that he has to give her a full physical exam and instructs her to go behind a curtain and strip.
In a normal situation on a regular stage, the actress could go behind a one-sided curtain and disrobe with no problem. But this was no regular stage; it was a theater in the round, meaning the audience circled all sides of the stage.
So Winslet went behind a curtain that wrapped around her, she stripped and lied “uncomfortably and awkwardly” naked on a bed. Then suddenly, she was thinking to herself, “It’s happening! It’s happening! It’s happening! Oh my God, I’m going to s— myself!”
“I’m convinced I’ve totally s— myself, and so I think, ‘What am I going to do?’ Because in a minute I have to stand up, come out from behind the curtain and look for all my clothes that he has hidden, and I’m like, ‘I’ve done a f—ing poo!” Winslet remembered in horror.
In a true “The Show Must Go On” moment, she wrinkled up the sheet on the bed around her as best as she could, while still thinking, “It’s happening! It’s happening! It’s happening!” and, knowing the audience could see her from every possible angle, was convinced that if she moved her body, there was going to be “poo” everywhere.
“Honestly, I practically slithered off the stage and I hid in a corner thinking, ‘I’ve got to check this sheet,’” she told Graham’s audience. “And ladies and gentlemen, I had not actually done a poo,” she concluded, “but the second I got into my dressing room and I ran into that bathroom, gunfire.”
Watch the hilarious video at the top.
