BBC BBC

TONIGHT’S EPISODE OF The Graham Norton Show will feature American actor Ethan Hawke, Australian actress Toni Collette, our very own Aidan Turner and comedian Jo Brand.

BBC have released a little taste of what they’ll be talking about on the show tonight and it turns out that Ethan Hawke has a pretty weird story to tell about how a co-worker died onstage in front of the audience at a Broadway production.

I was on Broadway once and I was doing a scene with the great Richard Easton, a Canadian actor who was in the RSC for 25 years. We were doing a scene where he was playing my father and I have to ask him for money and he would get very angry and shout at me. He would shout, and shout, and shout, and shout.

But one day, when they were performing, Ethan noticed that 85-year-old Richard was getting a little *too* into the role.

He was getting particularly mad and particularly heated.

Then suddenly, Richard had a heart attack and fell to the ground. The audience thought it was part of the production and were highly entertained by the sheer drama.

BBC BBC

Ethan admitted that he had been absolutely terrified, because in all of his years of working with Richard, he had never seen anything like that.

I knew something was terribly wrong. So, it turns out he died.

Obviously, Ethan’s a little bit calmer than we’d expect someone to be while talking about witnessing their co-worker’s death. That’s because…

There was a guy who did props on the show, who was really good at CPR and he came out and was working and doing CPR. We had to say “Is there a doctor in the house?” and somebody came out and the show stopped and we called the ambulance and the guys came and they restarted his heart again, eleven minutes later.

That’s a pretty impressive response time. Ethan then told Toni that literally nobody left the audience during the incident.

It was incredibly intense. We were all backstage praying. It was terrifying.

Richard Easton eventually returned to the play (not that night, obviously), and Ethan anxiously begged him not to get too angry each time they acted out that scene.

DailyEdge is on Instagram!