Five years ago, ABC premiered a high concept drama called FlashForward, which followed an FBI team investigating a worldwide phenomenon where humans across the globe saw a glimpse of their lives six months in the future. The show only lasted one season on the network, and starred John Cho and Joseph Fiennes. Recently, Cho was promoting his latest comedy, Selfie, but ended up recounting a dangerous but funny story about Fiennes’ driving habits on the set of FlashForward.
According to a story Cho posted on Reddit, while Fiennes is a real car buff, he had some major issues on the set when it came to working vehicles. We’re not talking problems with a clutch or anything, we’re talking forgetting how to put the car in park. Here’s the whole story.
“Here's the funny thing from FlashForward: Joseph Fiennes, who was the lead on that show, he owns lots of cars - I believe he's a car buff. But for some reason on the show, whenever he would exit a vehicle, he would forget to put it in park. And as soon as he would get out, with his FBI aviators on, just about to take his gun out of his shoulder holster, the car would start moving, and he would have to jump back in, panicking - you'd see outtakes of stuntmen jumping into the shot, trying to stop the car.”
The show was canceled eventually due to increasingly low ratings not Fiennes’ driving skills, but I can just imagine the dude who played Shakespeare and Merlin on the big screen flubbing up so ridiculously on set. It’s also easy to imagine the car rolling and the stunt guys chasing the car down the street before an accident happened. Luckily, it seems like no one was hurt by these flubs, but it still makes for an amusing story. At least nothing like this seems to have happened:
After FlashForward was canceled, Cho went on to star in a slew of TV endeavors, including Go On, Sleepy Hollow and now Selfie. Fiennes has mostly had movie roles in the time since, although he is well-known for appearing in the second season of American Horror Story, subtitled Asylum. The two actors have both been pretty successful, but let’s just hope that Fiennes doesn’t decide to sign on for any more cop or FBI dramas anytime soon. Or any movie where he may have to spend a significant chunk of time driving, really.
If you are interested in Selfie and some of John Cho’s other stories from the set, you can read his full AMA over at Reddit.
