Jennifer Garner’s Most Extreme on Set Story Involved a Real Bite

Jennifer Garner is looking back at a particularly intense moment from her past that sounds more like a heavyweight title fight than a typical day on a movie set. While attending a press conference for the second season of her Apple TV thriller The Last Thing He Told Me, the former Alias star revealed that she recently crossed paths again with stuntman Sala Baker.

This reunion brought back memories of their first encounter nineteen years ago during the filming of the 2007 action-thriller The Kingdom. During that shoot, Garner remembers that director Peter Berg wanted the combat to feel as raw as possible.

He essentially gave Baker permission to try to kill her during their scenes together, which left the performers with very little planned choreography. Instead, the director instructed Garner to do whatever it took to survive the encounter, leading to an unpredictable and brutal physical struggle between the two.

In the heat of that unscripted chaos, Garner took the instruction to heart and managed to climb onto the back of the New Zealand-born performer. She admitted that she actually bit his ear and noted that there is even a photograph of the stuntman with a piece of his ear missing. She jokingly compared the incident to the famous moment when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield during their 1997 boxing match.

Now that the two have reunited for the new season of The Last Thing He Told Me, Garner says they haven’t lost any of that old fire. She mentioned that the crew was actually worried during their first few days of filming and asked if they could be more careful with her.

Garner told them to back out of the way because she and Baker had no intention of holding back, joking that she still had a score to settle from their first fight nearly two decades ago.

Beyond her physical roles, Garner also shared why she thinks her current show resonates so much with modern audiences. She used the term competency p**n to describe the thrill of watching adults who are smart, capable, and full of integrity.

For Garner, her character Hannah represents that ideal because she is a woman who is meticulously prepared for every eventuality, much like the nurses and doctors in other popular procedural dramas.

As of February, Jennifer Garner is back at the center of the Hollywood conversation with the premiere of The Last Thing He Told Me season two, which officially arrives on Apple TV on February 20.

The new eight-episode season picks up five years after the original mystery, following Hannah and her stepdaughter, Bailey, as they deal with the shocking reappearance of Owen. The series continues to be a major project for Garner, who also serves as an executive producer alongside Reese Witherspoon.

Looking further into the year, Garner is expected to remain a fixture on streaming platforms with several high-profile literary adaptations. She is rumored to be starring alongside Regina Hall in an adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s The Five-Star Weekend, which is currently being developed for a late-year release.

Do you think Jennifer Garner’s transition from high-octane action roles like Alias to more psychological, “competent” characters reflects how much our tastes in TV heroes have changed over the years? Share your thoughts in the comments.