A Tiger's Tale - Tales From the Set by Barbara O'Brien - Ep 1

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Do you remember the first time you bit off more than you could chew? When your overconfidence landed you in a pickle that you weren’t prepared for? Well, that's exactly what happened to me when I made the rookie mistake of booking a Siberian tiger for a high-end department store’s furniture shoot in my early days of running an animal actors agency. Picture this: a majestic tiger, a pristine white leather furniture set, and a terrified crew looking to me for a solution as chaos ensues. 

Curious about what happened next? This episode offers a sneak peek into the unpredictable, often hilarious world of working with animal actors. So, buckle up and join me, Barbara O'Brien, as I narrate the first of many such Tales from the Set!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, it's Barbara O'Brien and you're listening to
Tales from the Set, episode one,a Tiger's Tale.
All right, it was a really longtime ago when I first started
my animal actors agency and thiswas back when I would still,
you know, because I didn't knowany better.
I would book things like youknow, tigers or bears or wolves,
and I don't do that.

(00:21):
I haven't done that in yearsand years because I don't think
people should have tigers andbears and wolves.
I just wanted to get that outin the open right away.
But this was way back.
I was just a kid and I had aclient who wanted to, you know,
book a tiger for a photo shoot.
Well, this was a well knownlarge department store, very
famous, you know, national bigdepartment store, pretty, pretty

(00:42):
high end, you know, and it wasfamous in the day and they
wanted to do a furniture shoot.
So they hired me to find thetiger, which I called my tiger
guy, because, you know,everybody's got a guy.
So I called my tiger guy and webring the tiger to the studio
and we unload the tiger and nowyou have to understand a tiger
is really big.
This is a big Siberian tigerand you know he's, but his tail

(01:04):
is about as long as his body andhis body's about five or six
feet long, I think.
I just remember him being likesuper big and his head would
come up past my hip and you know, head's bigger than any dog.
Or you know the size of a Idon't know the size of a tiger
big head, anyway, big, big tiger, right.
And so we let the tiger youknow he's supposed to A to B.

(01:27):
So A to B means go from point Ato point B across the set, and
so we're just directing thetiger back and forth.
The tiger walks one way acrossthe set and then turn them
around, walks the other wayacross the set and the
photographer is shooting and thefurniture looks beautiful.
It's all this beautiful leather, expensive furniture.

(01:50):
It was pretty, white coloredand fancy and, you know, not
anything I could ever have orwant.
But that's not the point.
Anyway, the tiger walks backand forth, he walks back and
forth and then all of a sudden,oh my gosh, the tiger like jumps
, jumps onto this giant ottoman,but he grabs this leather, this
big round leather ottoman, andhe starts tearing it apart.

(02:13):
He's like, he's like lifting itup where there's paws and he's
he's chewing on it and you know,and like tiger's, like just
playing with this, this ottoman,and and the clients are
freaking out.
I mean they're freaking outbecause oh my God, oh my God,
look, oh, oh, oh, what are wegoing to do?
What are we going to do?

(02:33):
And they all look at me, youknow, and I'm, I'm just like
standing there, like because Iyou know what.
So I look at the tiger trainer.
Now he's a pretty calm fellowand he's pretty laconic and he
just kind of standing there.
And what are we going to do?
They say, and he looks at themand kind of puts his head down a
little bit, looks back up andhe says I say we let him have it

(02:57):
.
And that's my tiger tail.
Thanks for listening.
Join us next time.
Tales from the Set.