"My hand was like an elephant's foot": Dev Patel recalls breaking his hand on the Monkey Man set

In a recent appearance on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, actor Dev Patel recalled his experience while shooting his latest film.

Following an enthusiastic reception at the South For Southwest Conference and Festivals for his directorial debut Monkey Man, Patel appeared on Fallon's show to promote the film. During his conversation with the host, Patel recounted having broken his hand while shooting the film.

"By the end of the day, my hand was like an elephant’s foot," he said.

The cast and crew faced many challenges during the filming of Monkey Man as it was shot during the COVID-19 pandemic. With not enough resources to digitally remove a cast, Dev Patel's broken bone was treated with a screw instead.

The movie premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2024, and stars Patel, along with Sobhita Dhulipala, Sharlto Copley, Pitobash, and Vipin Sharma, among others.

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Dev Patel recounts story of how he broke his hand while filming Monkey Man

Dev Patel's directorial action-drama Monkey Man won the Audience Award for a Headliner film at the SXSW Film and TV Festival Awards on March 13, two days after it premiered. During an appearance on The Tonight Show, the 33-year-old actor talked about the challenging experience he had while making the movie.

"Everything that could've gone wrong went wrong... I’m a crash test dummy that my co-star is using my face to break every piece of porcelain in this bathroom, and my hand, I heard it snap," Patel recounted.

Despite breaking his hand, Patel continued filming. He said that he knew "if I go down, the film goes down" and asked his producer to keep his injury hidden. However, he claimed that by the end of the day, his hand looked like "an elephant's foot" and he had to board a cheap private medical jet that flew him to Jakarta for medical attention.

"The doctor put a screw in my hand and he goes, 'You cannot put more than a pound or two of pressure on this things otherwise it's like pulling a bent nail out of wood. You will ruin your bone'," the actor told Fallon.

The Slumdog Millionaire actor took no rest though. The next day, Dev Patel was back on set performing stunts again. He told Fallon:

"Actually, I went straight back to set the next day, and was throwing myself and bouncing off a window. And the crew, they made a T-shirt."

Patel's crew gifted him with a t-shirt that had the x-ray of his broken hand printed on it. The front of the shirt also featured a bubble symbolizing the COVID quarantine bubble, while the back featured a cartoon monkey in reference to the movie. Handing Fallon a blue t-shirt of his own, Dev Patel explained:

"One of the guys got my x-ray. They call it 'the one screw that kept this production alive.'"

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Inspired by the mythology of the Hindu deity Hanuman, Monkey Man is an action thriller that follows a character named Kid. The character sets out on a path of vengeance over the murder of his mother and the corruption of the society around him. The synopsis on IMDb reads:

"An anonymous young man unleashes a campaign of vengeance against the corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to systemically victimize the poor and powerless."

Get Out director Jordon Peele partnered with Univeral Pictures to release the film theatrically. Filmed and set mostly in India with a predominantly Indian cast, Monkey Man is set to be released on April 5, 2024.