Alison Brie Recalls Her Unfortunate ‘Peeing Incident’ on the Set of Mad Men

Was Mad Men pee-your-pants funny? Well, no, the hit AMC show about advertising executives in the 1960s wasn't a comedy. But Alison Brie—who played Trudy Campbell on the series from 2007-2015—did once pee her girdle on set. 

“On Mad Men, once there was a peeing incident,” Brie recently admitted on Justin Long's podcast Life Is Short, per People. "We wore girdles…it’s basically like biker shorts that go all the way up to our ribs, and it’s like time-period appropriate," she explained. 

Mad Men was known for its extremely period-specific sets and costumes, with everything as accurate as possible. But women still peed in toilets in the ‘60s, right? Yes, through a small hole in the girdle’s crotch area for convenience (those outfits were hard to take all the way off, okay?). 

Unfortunately, Brie accidentally blocked that hole with modern underwear. "I didn’t know, for the first season of Mad Men, that you weren’t really supposed to wear underwear under them, because they are underwear," she said, recalling that this caused trouble one day when she was on set. "I rushed to the bathroom ... [I] tried to pull the hole open, but I didn’t pull my underwear to the side so I’m peeing and not hearing it hit the bowl and then I just feel warmth." 

“Mad Men was my first real job so I didn't ever want to be the problem person,” Brie said, so she said she "just dabbed it with a bunch of toilet paper" and got back to filming. "They’re waiting on me...I don't want to lose my job," she recalled. 

Don't worry, it all ends well: Brie did “several takes” before the show's costume designer, Katherine Jane Bryant, asked her what was wrong and she fessed up to the incident. Apparently, it had happened before, and Bryant quickly volunteered to grab Brie a fresh girdle. "She couldn't have been better about it," she said.

Alison Brie, of course, went on to become a major character on Mad Men, Community, and later, GLOW. Just goes to show: if you're willing to pee yourself for art, good things may come your way! 

Originally Appeared on Glamour