‘Nine Perfect Strangers’: Melvin Gregg Wanted to Keep Samara Weaving’s Prop Nose From the Horrifying Hallucination Scene
Things are going off the rails in the most recent episode of the Hulu series Nine Perfect Strangers. In episode 6, “Motherlode,” Masha offers her guests a higher dose of the hallucinogenic drugs they have been taking. Every guest voluntarily partakes, including Ben and Jessica.
Jessica then suffers a terrifying hallucination where she thinks that her nose has fallen off. Samara Weaving and Melvin Gregg managed to make this scene a combination of comical and horrifying. Gregg even wanted to keep Weaving’s prop nose as a souvenir.
Melvin Gregg plays Ben Chandler in ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’
Melvin Gregg plays Ben, a young man whose life is turned upside down when he wins the lottery. Ben goes to Tranquillum with his wife Jessica for couples counseling. So far, not much has been revealed about Ben’s personal story. He loves cars and drives to Tranquillum in a Lamborghini. Ben also seems to miss his life before he became a wealthy man. In “Earth Day,” he tells the group that he used to drive a catering truck and that it “had meaning.” After winning the lottery, he states that “everything else became moot.”
Ben’s wife Jessica also undergoes extreme cosmetic procedures after the couple wins their money. The book by Liane Moriarty explains in more detail that Ben misses the way Jessica looked before she altered her appearance. Jessica also seems to have undiagnosed body dysmorphic disorder, which likely fuels her frightening hallucination.
Samara Weaving’s hallucination scene
Weaving’s character Jessica is obsessed with her looks and image in Nine Perfect Strangers. This makes her drug-fueled hallucination all the more terrifying. Jessica looks in the mirror and notices a giant pimple that grows and grows until her nose falls off into the sink. She screams, and Ben runs into the room to calm her down and assure her that her nose is still on her face.
Gregg shared with Insider that he was delighted with the way the scene turned out. The look of the makeup and prosthetic nose is all the more impressive, considering it was shot without any special effects. “I wasn’t sure how it would look because they had to make her entire nose disappear, but they did a great job,” he told the outlet.
Melvin Gregg wanted to keep the fake nose
After filming for this scene was over, Gregg confessed that he wanted to keep the prosthetic nose as a memento for his time on Nine Perfect Strangers. “I wanted Jessica’s nose,” the actor said to Insider. “I felt like it would be cool to put it in a little glass with some type of liquid where it floats so it just looks like a science project.”
In the end, Gregg decided not to take the fake nose with him, but he remembers filming that day fondly. “It was a fun scene,” he told Insider.