Mads Mikkelsen fan brought polar bear pet to the set of new drama

Filmmaker Joe Penna managed to get a polar bear wrangler on the cheap for his movie debut because he was such a fan of the film’s leading man, Mads Mikkelsen.
The director feared budget cuts would force him to use a fake claw on a stick and actual footage of an angry bear as he shot a pivotal attack scene in new movie Arctic, but then he heard there was a real-life expert with his own pet bear, who wanted to get involved in the movie.
“Because of budgetary concerns, there was no version of a polar bear we could afford,” the director tells WENN. “We initially shot it like (shark movie) Jaws, where we had this paw thing that the production design did, but it just wasn’t working out.
“For backup I was looking for polar bear footage and I found this guy swimming with a polar bear. I tracked him down and it turns out Aggie, the polar bear, was 22 years old. The trainer was a huge Mads Mikkelsen fan, so he agreed to work with us and tell her to do the things she does in the film.”
Penna thought his problems were over until he had to deal with the biggest diva on the set: “I couldn’t speak to the trainer at all because Aggie would get so jealous. I had to speak to his wife, who then had to whisper to the trainer whatever I needed for her to hit her marks.”
And when he wasn’t dealing with the bear, the director had to stop his leading man from jumping into Icelandic crevices.
“Mads is very supple and does his own stunts,” the director says. “He had just done Doctor Strange, where he did so many stunts and he’d say, “If you need me to fall into a crevice, I’ll just do it. Make a hole for me and I’ll step into it’. The answer from everybody on set was ‘No’, but he’d say, ‘OK, I won’t do it’, and wink at me. I said, ‘No man, don’t wink at me. I really don’t want you to do it!’
“Eventually there was enough safety meetings, where the stunt guys felt that Mads could do it. He did it without any pads or anything in six takes. He was falling into a big cushion of snow at the bottom of it.”