James Burrows said the incident happened many years ago (Picture: REX)
Former Coronation Street actor James Burrows has described the moment he almost lost an eye on the set of a project ‘years and years ago’.
The 31-year-old described the moment while chatting to Metro.co.uk about his recent Netflix film Three Day Millionaire, in which he plays larger-than-life Curly Dean.
Directed by Jack Spring, the comedy tells a fictional tale of Grimsby fishermen who set out to reclaim their town from the hands of new developers seeking to close down the historic industry.
But it wasn’t on the set of Three Day Millionaire, nor the set of upcoming Apple TV series Hijack with Idris Elba, in which James also stars, that he almost lost an eye.
The actor, who portrayed Corrie’s Dr Ali Neeson from 2018 to 2020, described how he was ‘doing a fight scene and there were guns involved’ when the incident occurred many years ago.
‘I’m not going to say what job it was on because I don’t want to get anyone into trouble,’ the Derbyshire-born actor said.
James played Dr Ali Neeson on Coronation Street for two years from 2018 to 2020 (Picture: ITV)
James (left) stars in the new Netflix film Three Day Millionaire (Picture: @britflicks)
‘We were rehearsing and rehearsing this scene,’ he began, before describing how ‘one of the actors’ had a gun ‘right in my face, right in my eye’.
‘He wasn’t supposed to pull the trigger in the actual scene, but when we were rehearsing he was getting into his character so much,’ explained James.
‘He was obviously getting quite angry, and he was pulling the trigger quite a lot in rehearsals.’
The Eden Lake actor continued: ‘And what had happened was, we were in between a rehearsal and the armorer turned around and normally shows everyone on set, “Look it’s a blank magazine,” or whatever, and he pulled the trigger – 1, 2, 3 – and on the fourth click, it went bang.’
‘It was a blank,’ explained James, which he said ‘probably wouldn’t have killed’ him but could have ‘made [him] blind’.
James’ new film is set in Grimsby (Picture: @britflicks)
‘It’s all a little bit scary really because of the whole thing that happened with Alec Baldwin,’ James added.
Baldwin is facing involuntary manslaughter charges after a prop gun he was holding discharged and shot cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in 2021 on the set of the film Rust.
Since this incident, James also noted how gun safety on set has become much more of a focus.
The film follows a group of fishermen as they seek to save Grimsby’s main industry (Picture: @britflicks)
James is also working closely with armorers on the upcoming film Hijack, and described Luther’s Idris as a ‘really nice guy’ and someone he’d ‘love’ to work with again.
The star loved filming for Three Day Millionaire, which is out now on Netflix, describing it as ‘fantastic’.
‘We had a fantastic time filming,’ James said, as he cited the cast and crew as the reason it was such an enjoyable experience.
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‘It kind of felt like we were family after it’.
Three Day Millionaire is out now on Netflix.
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He was lucky.