Deep Water star Ben Affleck was "exceptionally good" with the snails on set, says the film's animal wrangler Max Anton.
Recalling how "fantastic" the actor was to work with on the new erotic thriller, Anton told Entertainment Weekly: "He's a great listener, and you can tell that when he does his scenes, he will take instructions. He understands them, and usually, he can nail it the first time. We didn't lose a single one."
Based on Patricia Highsmith's 1957 book of the same name, the Adrian Lyne-directed flick sees Affleck play Vic Van Allen, a husband who allows his distant wife Melinda (Ana de Armas) to have affairs in order to keep their family together. But when one of Melinda's lovers goes missing, Vic finds himself a prime suspect in the disappearance. In the movie – and the novel – the duo keep snails.
Anton suggests the creatures are the foil for Vic and Melinda's loveless marriage. explaining that the gastropods "without even really brains, by definition, exhibited the kind of love and fidelity that these humans were seemingly incapable of."
Because of that, Vic is rather fascinated with them, which meant that Affleck had to handle the snails on camera quite a bit. Unfortunately, de Armas wasn't so keen on sharing the screen with her shelly co-stars, and Anton spent much of his time "trying to put her at ease" around them.
"She did not have to fake her look of revulsion. I don't know if she hated the snails, but she did not want to touch them," he laughed. "I said, 'You know in Knives Out, you were working with Captain America. He's a lot scarier than these animals.'
"She said, 'I'm not scared of it, I just think they're gross.' Despite being not okay with the snails, she did a great job too. And the director was just a delight to work with."
Deep Water is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video now. If you've already watched it, check out our list of best movies on Amazon Prime for some movie night inspiration.
