A Complete List Of The 'Celebrity Circus' Dead And Wounded
If you, like us, have been making involuntary smacking sounds in anticipation of tomorrow's premiere of Celebrity Circus—NBC's marriage of two separately wonderful things into a third, exponentially more wonderful thing—then this amuse bouche from the NY Post detailing the cast's various injuries and near-brushes with tiger-swat death is almost certainly going to get your salivary glands doing double-time:
Christopher Knight fractured his forearm while practicing with the German Wheel, a giant disc he failed to control. Stacey Dash cracked three ribs climbing "the silks," a length of fabric suspended 30 feet in the air.
And during a rehearsal, Olympic swimmer Janet Evans fell 15 feet from a trapeze. Evans also caused a wardrobe malfunction for her female partner when her fishnet stockings got caught on her partner's top and pulled it down. "She was completely exposed to the cast and crew," said our spy. "Janet was trying to help her. That's when she lost her balance and fell." The injured were quickly taken care of. The show, which premieres tomorrow, provides the "highest safety measures," said our insider.
Before it even has a chance to air, the casualty-count for Circus already approaches that of NBC's other Ben Silverman-championed arena bloodsport, American Gladiators. One crucial difference, however, is that the celebrity element makes it a lot trickier to simply have a director shout "Cut!" after an ill-fated contestant takes a fatal, spine-snapping fall from a high platform, their lifeless body swiftly disposed of via P.A.-manned wheelbarrow as the home audience remains blissfully none the wiser.