This content was created by Aaron Marcus. This content was uploaded by Aaron Marcus. This is a YouTube video titled "I Was In PHYSICAL DANGER On Set - How I Stayed Professional and Safe" (created 2025-12-15). The excerpt features actor Aaron Marcus (and an initial unidentified speaker labeled SPEAKER A) recounting a personal anecdote from a decades-old bank commercial shoot where a capuchin monkey named Freddie bit an assistant photographer. Aaron describes how he handled the situation, refused to continue for safety reasons, negotiated preserving the usable shots, and offers advice to actors about asserting boundaries and prioritizing personal safety. The clip ends with a call-to-action to subscribe and share.
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Hey, this is Freddie. Freddie is a very cute capuchin monkey who I had a chance to work with on a national ad campaign. It was a commercial modeling ad for a bank. And after 7 shots on the first— at that time period, first roll of film— Freddie jumps off my shoulders and he bit the assistant photographer, actually a few times. Oh, no. Sent him to the emergency room. About 20 minutes later, the art director from the ad agency walks over to me and he's freaking out, as was I. Looks at Freddie, who's sitting in the corner, seems pretty calm, and said, look, we only got 7 shots done. Can we continue? It looks like he's fine now. I want to share with you in this video what I said, how I said it, how I was able to protect myself and still stay professional. And I know this will be really helpful to you. Okay, let's get started. Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus. I've been very fortunate, been a full-time actor for over 40 years now. And I got a phone call from my agent— this is decades ago— asking if I was comfortable working with a monkey on a print ad. I said, yeah, absolutely. I love animals, and I thought this would be great. So I had to drive about 3 and a half hours to the studio, and I meet Freddie the capuchin monkey and his trainer, uh, who was very nice, and we're talking, and I asked, you know, so Freddie's a good— you know, he's a nice guy? Oh yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, look, he loves you. And he was all over me. He was great. So he's on my shoulder, and the whole concept is, hey, get the monkey off your back. And like I said before, after 7 shots, I don't know what happened. I don't know if it was the lights flashing, uh, I don't know if maybe the assistant photographer said something to him that he didn't appreciate. But whatever it was, yeah, he jumped off my shoulders and he bit the guy a few times. So the art director's looking at Freddy, who's sitting in the corner now. About 20 minutes went by and he was kind of like licking his paws and stuff. Maybe he was trying to get rid of, you know, DNA evidence, I don't know. And the art director said, look, he seems like he's fine now. We only did a few shots. Can we keep going? And this was really important for me because I only had a couple seconds to make a very quick decision. And that's why I want to share this with you, because it's very important. There was no way I was going to work with Freddie again. And if I just said, nope, I'm done, you know, I assumed a phone call would probably be sent to my agent. I assumed people would be very angry with me. And ultimately, if my agent had any problem with me saying no, I would have left my agent and gone on to somebody else, because taking care of yourself is the most important thing. You do not ever want to put yourself in physical danger, and there's no need to do that. And I don't care if people— and I've heard this stuff, you know, people will say, oh, you'll never work in this town again. I'll make sure— You know what? Let them say that because your health is the number one priority. So here's how I handled it. I said to the art director, I said, yeah, I know we only did 7. I said, look, I can't speak for Freddie, but I nailed those first 7 shots. They felt really good to me. So I'll tell you what, why don't you develop the film? Because once again, this was before everything was shot digitally. I'll stick around, develop the 7 shots because I think we have it. And they did, and they had it. And this, once again, this is the shot that they wound up using. But the important thing is, as difficult as it might be to say no, you have to say no. And if you are on a set and somebody asks you to perform a task that you're not comfortable with You feel like you're not skilled enough to do it, or you're just scared to do it. If you were not asked to do it ahead of time, then you say no. Now, if you said you can do the, you know, the certain skill, you got to be able to perform it. But I don't care what people say to you, how they might threaten you and things like that, you always take care of yourself. That is your number one priority as far as safety goes. If you have ever experienced any kind of problems on a set, please share it with us so we can learn from you. And look, if you found this helpful, please subscribe, click the notification bell. Love to get a comment from you and share the, the video with all of your actor friends. I am Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya. See ya.
