Tom Felton Says a Masturbating Baboon Ruined 'Harry Potter' Scene

According to Page Six, the 35-year-old actor writes in his new book, Beyond The Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard, about several interesting on-set incidents that happened over the course of the eight-film fantasy series, where he played none other than Slytherin hotshot, Draco Malfoy. And one of the most awkward moments he mentions in the memoir? Well, apparently it involved a very horny baboon.

According to Felton, it all went down while they were filming a scene from 2002's Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which took place during a transfiguration lesson with Professor McGonagall and a bunch of wild animals, including snakes, monkeys and toucans. Not to mention, one "rather ill-mannered baboon.”

“Unaware of the niceties of social interaction and set etiquette," the baboon started to furiously masturbate while they were in the middle of filming, with Felton adding that "in particular he was unaware of what behavior is appropriate to exhibit in front of a bunch of kids.“ And as he elaborated, that was his "roundabout way of saying that we had to cope with the distracting intrusion of a self-pleasuring primate during the filming of the scene.”

However, the baboon's little pleasure session ended up becoming an actual production issue for the $100 million film, as he ended up ruining multiple takes with the extremely uncouth display, especially seeing as how he was surrounded by a bunch of child actors — many of whom also happened to be pre-pubescent boys.

Felton continued, “[So] you can imagine the chaos that ensued each time one of us kids saw what was happening out of the corner of our eye and shouted, ‘Oh my God, look at that baboon!'”

Beyond The Wand: The Magic and Mayhem of Growing Up a Wizard is out today via Amazon. You can also read Page Six's entire report on the memoir here.

Photo via Shutterstock / Sam Aronov