When Dev Patel Broke His Hand On Monkey Man Sets And Continued With Minimal Treatment

Monkey Man is a special movie for Dev Patel. The actor, who became a household name after the success of Slumdog Millionaire, is making his directorial debut with the action flick. The trailer has managed to create quite the buzz ahead of the film’s release. The trailer makes it clear that the action sequences were quite demanding. So much so that Dev Patel, also the lead actor of Monkey Man, broke his hand in the first action sequence they filmed. 

Speaking at The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Dev Patel said, “Everything could have gone wrong went wrong. The first action scene I’m basically, I’m a crash test dummy where my co-star is using my face to break every piece of porcelain in this bathroom, and my hand, I heard it snap. I was like ‘This is not good’.”

However, despite this, the actor kept on going with his shoot. He shared that about 450 people were shooting on the island and if he stopped due to the injury, the film would not be completed. So, he told his producer, “‘Don’t say anything. Let’s just keep filming.’ By the end of the day my hand was like an elephant’s foot. And we couldn’t afford to put a cast on and VFX it out of this movie.”

Dev Patek shared that their team was filming Monkey Man during the pandemic, therefore, the medical facilities they had were not at par. He had flown to Jakarta the night he was injured, and the doctor put a screw in his hand and advised him not to put pressure. However, Dev mentioned, “Actually, I went straight back to set the next day, and was throwing myself and bouncing off a window.”

On the show, he also shared about a T-shirt that the crew jokingly made for him which had a picture of his hand x-ray and “The one screw that kept this production alive” inscribed on it.

Monkey Man follows a young man seeking vengeance against the corrupt politicians who murdered his mother. In addition to Dev Patel, the film stars Sharlto Copley, Sikandar Kher, Sobhita Dhulipala, Vipin Sharma and others. The film was originally set for a Netflix premiere but Jordan Peele, who was reportedly intrigued by the movie, purchased it, claiming that the flick deserved a theatrical release.