Beth Broderick’s gator scene for a scene in “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” could have ended with a trip to the hospital.

Sunday, November 3, 2024, 5:00 p.m

Sunday, November 3, 2024, 5:00 p.m

Beth Broderick was an “inch” from being bitten by an alligator filming an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

The 65-year-old actress – who played the aunt of Melissa Joan Hart’s titular character, Zelda Spellman, on the supernatural sitcom from 1996 to 2003 – may have suffered a nasty injury when she had to walk the reptile on a leash for a scene. .

The crew didn’t feel the alligator was “moving enough” and decided to sting it, but the animal went berserk.

Luckily, he bit a couch and not Beth.

She recalled to PEOPLE, “And people didn’t think the alligator was moving enough and it didn’t look real enough.

“It was very real so they started poking him and he got mad and he lashed out and he missed me by an inch and he bit the couch and wouldn’t let go.

“I was like, that could be my leg. Okay, let’s stop stinging the gator.”

It turns out that wasn’t the only “crazy” incident involving an animal.

In addition to a lion breaking through an electric fence and running wild, the show’s client had to wrestle a chicken to dress it in a tuxedo.

Beth recalled, “I was walking from my trailer to the set one day and I hear this crazy commotion in the costume room and I look in and our client Diane is trying to measure a chick for a tuxedo and that chick didn’t made. you want to wear a tuxedo.

“It was just the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I thought to myself, who else goes to work and sees this?”

She added: “I mean, this is kind of a singular experience.

“And he got to wear that tuxedo, he did. But I don’t think he liked it.”

These days, studios rely on technology like CGI for these kinds of scenes, but Beth said they had more fun doing “magic out of thin air.”

She said: “It was a wild show. You had to shoot everything in real time and practical effects and stuff. It was quite an experience and one you can never forget.

“That was the show, you made magic out of molehills… you made magic out of thin air.”