Olivia Wilde says Walton Goggins saved her life during filming of “Cowboys & Aliens” after a horse accident left her on the ground, with dozens of horses sprinting behind her in the dust—preventing her from being trampled. She also recalled the film’s 2011 rel
Olivia Wilde didn’t forget the sound—“like thunder”—as horses raced toward her on the desert set of “Cowboys & Aliens.” In her retelling. it wasn’t the usual Hollywood kind of danger. It was the kind that leaves you pinned between panic and calculation. waiting to see whether the bodies behind you would ever know you’re there.
Wilde says she was nearly stampeded to death by the animals while filming director Jon Favreau’s 2011 Western action movie “Cowboys & Aliens. ” based on the graphic novel of the same name. The tentpole starred Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. with Wilde. Walton Goggins. Sam Rockwell. and Paul Dano among the supporting cast.
On the “Armchair Expert” podcast. Wilde said. “Walt Goggins saved my life on that movie.” She described a “very bad horse accident” that happened as she. Craig. and Ford galloped “full sprint across the desert with 40 horses behind us.” In her account. a “large ditch” the horse jumped over during the take inadvertently threw her off.
“So sure enough, this horse jumps and bucks me off in the craziest way,” Wilde said. “I fell off. I hit my head and my back. and I was laying [on the ground] but. unfortunately. I was on the other side of this kind of lip of dirt. meaning that all horses behind couldn’t see me. And there was also a lot of dust.”.
She remembered listening as the herd closed in—her ear “to the ground” while the dust muffled everything into a rolling. relentless approach. “I remember having my ear to the ground and I could hear it and it sounded like thunder. like they were coming towards me. ” she said. And in that moment. she tried to cut through the terror with a blunt thought: “I had the thought—it sounds so dramatic—but I thought. it’ll be quick. It’ll be like, pulverized applesauce. Out.”.
Then she credits Goggins for cutting the nightmare short.
“Walt Goggins had seen [me] ahead of him and in a split second thought to turn his horse sideways right in front of me and let everyone kind of bash into him,” Wilde said. She added that Goggins was able to handle the situation as a rider. “And he’s a great rider, so he was able to handle that.”
Wilde said that people split to either side around the pair, thinking Goggins had lost his mind—but in her telling, he was doing the exact opposite. “People split the two sides around us thinking he had just gone insane, but he was protecting my body on the ground.”
And that’s where the gratitude lands. “And so I owe him my life. It’s crazy. He’s a real-life hero.”
The danger came during a film that. in the years since. has carried the odd weight of ambition and mixed performance. “Cowboys & Aliens” opened in July 2011. It became a box office disappointment, earning $175 million worldwide against a production budget in the $160 million range. Reviews were more encouraging than the numbers: Variety praised the movie as “a full-bodied, roundly satisfying yarn.”.
Olivia Wilde Walton Goggins Cowboys & Aliens Jon Favreau Daniel Craig Harrison Ford Sam Rockwell Paul Dano Armchair Expert horse accident desert filming