Go behind the scenes of moment Dev Patel broke his hand during “Monkey Man ”fight scene

“I had to do all the choreo one-handed,” the star-slash-filmmaker explains in an exclusive clip.

An essential part of filmmaking is adapting to last-minute changes on the spot — and Dev Patel proved his directorial mettle after sustaining a significant injury on the set of Monkey Man.

In an exclusive bonus featurette (above) ahead of Monkey Man's digital release on Tuesday, Patel discusses the challenges of directing and acting in a key fight sequence without one hand. “You know, I broke my hand in the middle of an action scene,” he says in the clip. “I had to do all the choreo one-handed for part of the film.”

Patel’s directorial debut follows a scrappy amateur boxer who fights through the fictional city of Yatana to avenge his mother’s death. Early in his journey, the protagonist, simply called “Kid,” confronts his mother’s killer Rana (Sikandar Kher) in a bathroom, leading to one of the film’s most exciting fight sequences — which is where Patel’s injury occurred.

Producer Jomon Thomas adds key context. “Dev did this move and his hand got stuck in Rana’s jacket, and Sikander moved, and Dev broke his bone,” Thomas remembers in the featurette. “And he came in and he said, ‘Oh, I think I sprained my thing,’ and it was like a balloon, like, [we said], ‘We should go to the hospital, or we should get our doctor.’ He said, ‘No, no, no. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going.’”

Related: Dev Patel on his 10-year journey to make Monkey Man: ‘Early on, I could never get access to a role like this’

Thomas says that once Patel’s fracture was diagnosed, logistics became tricky. We went shooting that bathroom fight scene on the floor with dirty water, all these moves, and the doctor came, and he looked at it, and said, ‘100%, it’s broken,’” he recalls. “We had to find this private medical jet that would fly us to Jakarta, to put a screw on the bone here. So if you look carefully, you’ll see in scenes, he has this bandage over his hand. It’s not a costume, it’s not by design. It’s actually because his hand was broken.”

Patel previously discussed his injury in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I broke my hand in this other fight before that, and I was like, ‘Damn, I’m way better in the stunt room’ because I could use two hands,” the filmmaker said. “But with this broken hand, everything changed to one-handed choreo, which was difficult.” Patel also said that he broke several of his toes before filming began, and that he developed an eye infection from repeatedly smashing his face into a bathroom sink.

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The co-writer/director/star explained why he felt he had to fight through his injuries on set. “If I go down, the film goes down,” he said on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Patel also told EW that he had to make a leading action role for himself. “If I was going to feature in an action film [before], I would be the comedic guy on the side, the tech dude, whatever,” he said. “To break the mold, you have to enter it. For me, it was like, ‘Okay, I’ll show them what we can do.’”

Related: Jordan Peele wants to cast Dev Patel in his next movie

Monkey Man will be available on digital starting tomorrow. Watch the full behind-the-scenes clip above.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.