David Schwimmer breaks down the 'gross' scene he improvised with a garden tool on “Goosebumps”

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Goosebumps season 2, episode 3.

David Schwimmer is committed to the bit.

The Friends star has pulled off countless comedic stunts with panache over the course of his storied career, but his role in the second season of Disney+ and Hulu's Goosebumps is pushing his range to new limits. "There's some scary stuff in there!" Schwimmer exclaims in an interview with Entertainment Weekly ahead of the series' Jan. 10 premiere.

While Schwimmer says he's "in awe of the tone" of the horror anthology series based on the beloved books by R.L. Stine, and praises producers Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller's ability to "make you feel safe while you're getting scared," one early scene put Goosebumps' family-friendliness to the test.

Related: David Schwimmer recalls 'genuinely frightening moment' from Friends live taping: 'He was going to pass out'

In season 2's story, Schwimmer plays Anthony Brewer, a botanist with an overloaded plate and diminishing patience. His mother dying in hospice care and his teenage children (Sam McCarthy and Jayden Bartels) coming to stay at his Brooklyn home for the summer is enough. The recurrence of a menacing supernatural force that caused his brother to disappear in the '80s (hence the season subtitle, The Vanishing) pushes him far over the line.

The first scene in which Anthony's alerted to the presence of something beyond the pale in the old neighborhood takes place in his basement greenhouse. Illuminated by radiant violet light, Anthony's body is invaded by a sentient bit of what Schwimmer calls "goo" that crawled out of the very same sewer where his brother was last seen. It takes a lot of yelling, a pronged garden tool, and a gnarly amount of manual force to pry what becomes a grizzled garden bulb out of his arm.

Schwimmer says it was a "great scene to shoot" despite how "nasty" it is to watch. He calls Letterman, Stoller, and showrunner Hilary Winston's decision to make the scene "not too gory and not too bloody" a "brilliant" one, continuing, "it was also a brilliant choice to make the goo black, not red. I think that's really smart, because I do think it triggers something different in our brains when we're watching it. It's more gross than gory."

Related: David Schwimmer looks back on rejecting Men in Black lead role: 'That would have made me a movie star'

"We did it a couple of different ways in terms of what was actually on my arm," he explains. "We shot it where there was nothing there, and it was all kind of mime and just my imagination. Then they created something like a special effect kind of hole in my arm where they would take this fake bulb and stuff it in, and then I would have to squeeze it out."

The "combination of actual physical special effects, makeup, and props, and then shooting it with nothing" add up to a gore sequence so seamless it's hard to watch straight on. Schwimmer says the key to creating that effortless flow is the fact that the Goosebumps crew "covered their butts in many ways and from different angles so that they could then add whatever they needed in visual effects later. That's where, as you know, all the magic happens."

Related: Goosebumps author R.L. Stine: 'I've written over 330 books — not one of them came from my heart'

Though known as a king of comedy, Schwimmer is a self-described horror fan, and was eager to tackle the genre as a new challenge.

"The fun for me as an actor is just imagining this thing happening," he says of the bulb scene. "When I'm putting pressure and trying to pull it out with a garden tool — by the way, the garden tool was my idea — I was thinking, 'What would be around, what would you grab? Get some leverage in there.' The fun was just pretending it was all really happening and committing to it. Then five months later seeing the result. It's just so satisfying."

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The new Goosebumps parts ways with the beloved '90s series' episodic anthology format for an American Horror Story-style seasonal anthology format. That means viewers get to enjoy Schwimmer in his horror era for the season's full run.

Schwimmer can be seen alongside McCarthy, Bartels, Ana Ortiz, Elijah M. Cooper, Galilea La Salvia, and Francesca Noel in Goosebumps: The Vanishing, which drops all eight episodes Jan. 10 on Disney + and Hulu.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly