Things got a little too real on the set of Anyone But You, in a moment that portends Sweeney’s role as the future Spider-Woman in Madame Web.

Things got a little too real on the set of Sydney Sweeney’s latest movie. The Euphoria star, who’ll play Julia Carpenter in 2024’s Spider-Man universe movie Madame Web, stopped by The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on December 12.

While Sweeney shared her (mostly positive!) experiences filming the romantic comedy Anyone But You in Sydney, Australia, she also endured an on-screen spider bite that was caught on film.

For the scene, Sweeney explained, she was supposed to hold a Huntsman spider and then pretend that it had bitten her.

“They told me it was trained. I don’t know how you train a freaking spider,” she recounted to Fallon. “So we’re filming and the thing just starts biting me. But we’re in the middle of the scene and I’m supposed to be screaming, but then my screaming got really serious.”

Still, no one seemed to clock what had happened. “They thought I was making really serious dramatic choices in a rom-com,” Sweeney continued. Fortunately, her co-star Glen Powell came to the rescue.

“No one cut. I’m just standing there with a spider on my arm, biting me, and I’m screaming, and everyone’s watching…and Glen was the only one who was like, ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, I think this is a little real,” she said.

Sydney Sweeney during an interview with host Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon Episode 1889 on Tuesday, December 12, 2023. Photo: Todd Owyoung/NBC

See Sydney Sweeney get bitten by a spider on set of Anyone But You

Sweeney shared the footage of the real bite, which didn’t make it into the movie, along with the cut that did. In the unused take, she screams out, “no! He’s really biting me!” Arachnophobes, don’t watch that video.

Spiders are super common in Australia, as Sweeney learned during her two and a half months in the country. And they’re sneaky. “The spiders hide in everything. I had a spider in my vent, the leg was sticking out,” she told Fallon, advising, “You have to shake your shoe before you put your shoe on.”

No poison, and no super powers, for the Madame Web star

Sweeney recalled her panic after the incident, saying, “I thought I was gonna die. It’s poisonous! I’m gonna die!” (Huntsman spiders do have venom, but reactions do not usually require hospitalization.) Thankfully, she was fine after taking a little medicine, as she explained on Today.

In a funny twist, the set medic wrote in their report, “Bitten by spider, now spiderwoman.” Sweeney told Fallon that they couldn’t have known that Sweeney really is joining the spider-verse in 2024, as her role as the future Spider-Woman Julia Carpenter in the upcoming Madame Web had yet to be announced.