Bo Derek describes her lion attack on the set of 'Tarzan'

Bo Derek reveals she was nearly mauled by a lion while filming Tarzan, and how actor Michael O'Keefe, who played the lead role, had to rescue her.

Video Transcript

- Are you Tarzan?

ETHAN ALTER: You shot to stardom with "10," that came out in '79. Why did you decide to make "Tarzan" your first major Hollywood leading role? What was the decision behind that?

BO DEREK: I remember I was being offered everything. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle was one of them. And in the process of talking with my agent, I don't know how, but we just started talking about something, because the classic line is "me Tarzan, you Jane." And you know this was 1980, '81, when we were trying to put this package together. And we thought we could kind of switch it, and have the attitude of the movie be "me Jane, you Tarzan." Because you know, women's issues and rights and things were in full swing back then. So that was the plan.

Then the only rights we could get at the time were to remake a 1932 film. And we had to be exact. Every time we had the writer write a version of what we wanted to make, the legal department, you know, "you must have-- you know, someone has to fall off the escarpment. You can't change "me Tarzan, you Jane" from Johnny Weissmuller. You can't do this, you can't do that." And sometimes when you're making a film, you start off wanting one thing, and you end up making something you don't even recognize. So there's a lot of that.

I was feeling a bit controlled, pushed, shoved. I mean, honestly, people were coming into our office with big cases full of cash to get me to sign anything. Whether it's merchandising to sell something, I don't know, they didn't care. They would walk in, "what are your interests? Here, sign. And here's a case full of cash." So it was pretty crazy, and everyone knew what I should do, except me. And so I was feeling pulled, pushed, shoved, exploited.

And I thought-- it was my husband's advice to produce my own movie and exploit myself.

ETHAN ALTER: You have some great animal actors in the movie as well. I think of the lion that attacks you on the beach. What was the process of like that lion scene, for example? Did he really jump on you?

BO DEREK: He did I want to explain this, because it was a different time, the way we felt about wild animals. We wrote scenes according to what they said the animals would do. Then when we got there, and I saw the abuse that some of the animals had to go through to get the scene that we wrote, we were able to quickly say, "hold on, everybody. Let's stop this." I think what was beautiful in the film is, we just started using what the animals did naturally, instead of beating, sometimes beating them into performances.

It was an awakening, and I get a lot of criticism now just for riding an elephant in that movie, or in still shots. And I get it. I understand it. It was a different time.

ETHAN ALTER: Very involved with animal causes today. Not just there, but elsewhere.

BO DEREK: Yeah.

ETHAN ALTER: So was that sort of the birth of that, working on that movie and getting more--

BO DEREK: Yeah. I'm on the board of WildAid, a great conservation foundation. But the lion, when I got there, I started walking down, and I see this gorgeous, young, spectacular male lion. And I said then, I said, "I don't like the way he's looking at me." Because you know, you get that feeling on the back of your neck that you're prey, and that's the way he's looking at me. And as I walked around, he would follow me, his eyes, and just be fixed on me.

So then when it came time to use him on the beach, he was still fixated on me. And for two days, while he was tied down, with Tarzan next to him, he and Tarzan were buddies, no problem. He was still fixated on me. And to get the scene, I'm coming out of the sea, Tarzan sees me. It's the first time we meet. And he pulls me out of the sea. So I'm running and screaming for two days in front of this lion, just like prey.

So all of a sudden, on the day when we're actually shooting, the lion breaks loose. My husband is the cinematographer. He's half a mile down the beach with a long, long lens, so he's watching all this happen. And Tarzan saved my life. Miles O'Keeffe saved my life. When the lion went to attack me, he pushed Miles on top of me, and I crawled out from underneath. He doesn't have his claws, but he has his teeth. So he's swatting me around Tarzan, and you know, they're really powerful. They can break your neck with their paws.

So I'm getting beat up. But I knew he didn't like the water. So I'm trying to crawl to the surf, and he keeps going out, he keeps going out. And then when I crawl out, the lion got back, went to leap again, and Tarzan held him just long enough around the waist to confuse him, piss him off, whatever it was, the lion, and it gave me time to get to the ocean. But he did, right before the wave came in, he did get on my back and went down to take my shoulder off. But the angle was wrong, so he just sliced me on my shoulder.

Yeah, it was really crazy. My husband's furious, he's going to kill everybody. "We're shutting down production." By the time we got to dinner, John is there with his storyboard, figuring out how to use the attack in the film. And he needed another shot with Miles pulling the lion off of me, and we used as much as we could in the film.

ETHAN ALTER: I know your husband photographed you for Playboy. And your later films as well also had sexual content in them. Were those scenes comfortable for you to do? How did you talk through them when you had to do those moments on camera?

BO DEREK: You know, I just try to treat them like anything else. You know, you're directed constantly and shots are set up, and so they were never a big deal for me. And at that time, they were sort of a required element in a film. If you wanted good foreign sales, all those things, and if you look at most films, there was the obligatory love scene.

ETHAN ALTER: Was that one of the things that you felt exploited about? Sort of always having to do scenes like that in your films?

BO DEREK: The films I was being offered at the time, definitely they all had that. So I felt better being in control and being, as a producer, I could-- I was involved in the editing room and how much was in the movie and how much wasn't.

ETHAN ALTER: It was in the top 20 of 1981. The critics weren't always as kind, unfortunately. And the Golden Raspberry nominations, you got nominated for that. Was that painful for you to see that reaction?

BO DEREK: No. I mean, if you look at Golden Raspberries, I'm in really good company, so I'm fine with that. You know, they don't like husbands and wives working together in general, Hollywood. I never planned to make films with just my husband. But the few films that we made together made money, so there was always an opportunity to make another one together.

And who I was at the time and the attention I was getting, and the criticism I was getting, it was just fun to go off and make a film with my husband, you know, on some exotic location. We always left town and went someplace and tried to make a good movie. And fortunately, they did well, all of them.