While Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom rarely ranks highly on any list of Steven Spielberg’s best films, it is without a doubt one of the most important to the director. That’s because he met his wife of 35 years, Kate Capshaw, while making it. Doom was a tough production, and at one point Capshaw actually took a piece of wood to the face, leading her to land a black eye. What happened next was a truly romantic story.
In response, Spielberg (probably because he was crushing on her a little bit) got the whole crew to show solidarity with the actress. Co-star Ke Huy Quan recently told the story in his new autobiography, Never Say Die. Here’s what happened.
The Temple Of Doom Set Was Family
In the book, Quan talks about how close the Doom cast and crew were on the set, calling it family. Of course, families sometimes play pranks on on another, so there were some fun shenanigans going down on set at the time. One such prank happened after an accident gave Capshaw a minor injury, as Quan explained in the book (via EW):
During one of the mine scenes, I accidentally snapped a piece of balsa wood, and it flew off and hit Kate right in the face. It was so light, she was fine, but the next morning she showed up with the most perfect black eye I’d ever seen. I felt awful.
Normally on a set, a star of the movie getting a “perfect black eye” would cause some stress, I'd assume especially for the makeup department. It surely did, but Spielberg knew how to loosen the tension. He did so by enlisting the help of the makeup artists, not to cover Capshaw’s black eye, but to give everyone else sympathetic black eyes. As Quan explains:
Before she arrived [on set], Steven had Harrison [Ford] and me, the entire crew—the grips, the production assistants, and everyone else—paint matching black eyes in the exact same spot. When Kate walked onto the set and saw fifty people staring back at her with the same bruise, she froze for a second and then burst out laughing. Steven was behind the monitor, grinning.
This must have been one of those moments early in Spielberg and Capshaw’s relationship when a sweet gesture like that not only lightened things up on set, but must have endeared Capshaw to Spielberg. The two started dating on the set of Temple of Doom and were married a few years later, in 1991. They’ve defied the usual Hollywood trope of a short-lived marriage and remain happily married today.
All these years later, Quan is still in awe of how the legendary director handled his set on Temple of Doom, which you can watch either with a Paramount+ subscription or a Disney+ subscription. According to Quan, who made his film debut in the Raiders of the Lost Ark sequel. It seems Spielberg knew exactly how to solve every problem and relieve any stress, like getting Quan to cheer Harrison Ford up on set. It’s an admiration that has lasted decades, including a shoutout to Spielberg by Quan when the latter won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once in 2023, nearly 40 years after Temple of Doom.
Hearing stories like this, it’s no wonder Spielberg is so respected in Hollywood.
