Jessica Biel’s archery skills were too good: The time she took out a $300,000 camera filming ‘Blade 3’

‘Blade Trinity’ had a very eventful production, full of anecdotes, and we’re not referring to Wesley Snipes’ terrifying (because cheap) CGI eyes, but to an accident that cost several hundred thousand dollars. Jessica Biel, Abigail Whistler in the film, unintentionally destroyed a $300,000 camera by shooting an arrow into the lens. Long before Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye existed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Jessica Biel already proved she had the marksmanship worthy of a real-life superhero.

This is how Jessica Biel destroyed a very expensive camera with a single (and accurate) archery shot in ‘Blade Trinity’

In ‘Blade Trinity’ (2004), the third installment of Wesley Snipes’ vampire action saga, Jessica Biel played Abigail Whistler, the daughter of Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), Blade’s mentor. In the film’s plot, Abigail is a highly capable fighter against the vampire hordes, using a compound bow and arrows as her primary weapon.

While training with this peculiar weapon, Jessica Biel was the protagonist of an accident that was extraordinarily expensive for the film’s production. During the filming of a shot in which Abigail shot an arrow directly at the camera, the actress hit the center of the lens, precisely on a tiny two-square-inch strip that hadn’t been covered with Plexiglas to avoid blurring the image too much. This amusing anecdote was revealed in the extras for the home editions of ‘Blade 3’, and you can watch the clip below:

“Jessica did her own bow work in the film. For one scene, we wanted her to shoot an arrow at the camera. To protect both the crew and the camera, we walled off everything with Plexiglas except for a two-inch-square portion in the center. She shot from a distance of 40 feet and 50 feet above the camera, hitting the lens squarely. She planted an arrow six inches deep, destroying a $300,000 camera,” revealed David S. Goyer, the film’s writer and director.

“It’s not exactly a ‘medal of honor,’ but sometimes these things just happen, and it’s a good thing we have insurance,” the director laughed. The irony of this accident is that it conclusively demonstrated Biel’s suitability for the role, as her aim was completely realistic.

In short, these types of accidents during filming, in which fortunately no injuries are reported, are more common than we think. Even when all the necessary safety measures are taken, sometimes chance—or extremely precise aim—can turn the filming of an exciting sequence into an unforeseen cost amounting to several hundred thousand dollars.

Unfortunately, this anecdote was somewhat overshadowed by the problems Wesley Snipes caused the rest of the cast. Among his delusional demands, with the supposed excuse that they were to “never break character,” he demanded that they always address him as “Blade” and left passive-aggressive Post-its all over the set signed as the character, minutely detailing everything he didn’t like about the film. But this story is worthy of its own making-of... and a lot of patience.

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