JENNIFER GARNER ONCE BIT COSTAR'S EAR LIKE MIKE TYSON: 'MISSING A CHUNK'

"We did not have a lot of choreography, and [the director] told me to do anything I could to survive," the actress said of filming 2007's "The Kingdom."

Key points

• Jennifer Garner reunited with actor and stunt performer Sala Baker in season 2 of The Last Thing He Told Me.
• While promoting the show, the Alias star remembered fighting Baker on screen in the 2007 thriller The Kingdom.
• Garner said she "bit his ear," which led to Baker "missing a chunk": "like Mike Tyson."

Jennifer Garner is remembering a bloody on-set encounter with a stunt performer.

At a press conference promoting the second season of her thriller series The Last Thing He Told Me, the Alias actress said that she recently reunited with Sala Baker, a New Zealand-born actor and stunt performer, in a new fight scene.

"Can I just say that the performer, Sal, the last time I fought him was in The Kingdom," Garner said of her 2007 thriller, which also starred Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman (via THR).

The Elektra star said that while fighting with Baker 19 years ago, the film's director encouraged the performers to up the intensity. "Pete Berg, who was the director, told him to try to kill me," she remembered. "We did not have a lot of choreography, and he told me to do anything I could to survive. He did, and I did.

Garner's next move surprised everyone on set. "I ended up scrambling onto his back," she remembered. "I bit his ear, and we have a picture of him missing a chunk of ear, because we were not kidding."

The actress's anecdote prompted her The Last Thing He Wanted costar Nikolaj Coster-Waldau to ask for clarification. "Can we just go over that again? You bit a piece of his ear off?” he asked.

"Like Mike Tyson," Garner responded, in reference to the legendary boxer chewing off a section of Evander Holyfield's ear during their WBA heavyweight title fight in 1997.

The actress also said that she and Baker maintained their Kingdom–level intensity on their latest project. 

"We went for it in a way that the crew — this was maybe our first or second day of shooting — were like, 'Can you be careful with her?'" she remembered. "I was like, 'No, no, no, no, he's not going to be careful. I'm not going to be careful. Just back out of the way. I have a score to settle here.' And Sal was with us the entire season. So prepare yourselves."

Elsewhere in the press conference, Garner shared her perspective on the appeal of The Last Thing He Told Me, which sees her portray Hannah Hall, a woman who bonds with her stepdaughter (Angourie Rice) after her husband (Coster-Waldau) mysteriously disappears.

"Have you guys heard of this term' competency porn'?" Garner asked at the press conference. "We're so hungry for grown-ups to be competent and smart and have integrity and do what they're supposed to do….that we really fall for shows like The Pitt, where Noah Wiley is just so in charge, and all those nurses are incredible. In this case, Hannah does that for me. She has prepared everything for every eventuality."

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The Last Thing He Told Me premieres on Apple TV on Feb. 20.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly

2026-02-04T23:21:11Z