Dame Joan Collins has revealed that the famous lily pond scene in Dynasty ended in real-life drama, with the actor being sent to the hospital with a concussion.
Collins, 93, starred in American soap opera Dynasty as Alexis Colby, the vengeful ex-wife of ruthless oil tycoon Blake Carrington (John Forsythe) from 1981 until 1989.
Alexis’s long-running feud with Blake’s second wife, Krystle (Linda Evans), is a key plot line throughout the soap, with one memorable moment in season three seeing the pair fight one another in a lily pond after Alexis confessed to killing Krystle’s former husband Mark Jennings (Geoffrey Scott).
Speaking about the scene 45 years on, Collins revealed in a new interview that she was “quite seriously hurt” during filming after co-star Evans accidentally hit her.
The actor said that production had asked her and Evans to film the fight scenes themselves as stunt doubles were not available.
“I literally flew in and my hat flew off,” she told This Morning’s Ben Shepherd and Cat Deeley on Wednesday (7 October).
“Linda was there to hit me around. I did actually get quite seriously hurt,” she continued, adding that the director was meant to say “cut” before Evans’ fist made contact with her.
“He didn’t say it so she hit me and I hit my head against the side of the swimming pool and the next thing I know, I’m in A&E, the American equivalent, and I’ve had a little tiny concussion,” she said.
“Luckily, I didn’t have to work for the rest of the day. They got my double. I did say something rather rude which I can’t say on TV.”
The Independent has contacted Evans for comment.
Despite the injury, Collins gushed about her time on the soap and insisted that Alexis was not actually a villain.
“She’s getting her revenge on a man who treated her appallingly and as so many women are treated appallingly today by men, I think they like the fact that Alexis was giving this man, who banished her from her children for 16 years and also murdered her lover, that she’s getting her revenge,” she said.
“I think that is something that appeals to a lot of people.”
Off screen, Collins and Evans were rumoured to have feuded while filming the show – however, Evans said that wasn’t the case earlier this year.
“So many [arguments reported by the press] never happened,” she told Hello! in March. “It's because it made it exciting for people to think we were fighting with each other.
“We never had one fight personally. We had lots of fights professionally because we had to do the script, but we never had a confrontation.”
Collins did in fact clash with her other co-star, John Forsythe, with the actor revealing in 2021 that she thought he was a “misogynistic p****”.
“[Forsythe] had it in his contract that he always had to have $5,000 (£3,600) an episode more than anybody else in the cast, and that in any publicity that went out about the show, he always had to be front and centre,” she told Piers Morgan’s Life Stories at the time.
“They were so misogynistic they allowed this to happen.”
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