Beth Broderick’s alligator scene for a scene in “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” could have ended with a hospital visit.

Sunday November 3, 2024 5:00 p.m.

Sunday November 3, 2024 5:00 p.m.

Beth Broderick was inches away from being bitten by an alligator while filming an episode of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.”

The 65-year-old actress – who played the aunt of Melissa Joan Hart’s main character, Zelda Spellman, on the supernatural sitcom from 1996 to 2003 – could have ended up with a nasty injury when she had to walk with the reptile on a leash during one scene. .

The crew didn’t feel the alligator was “moving enough” and decided to push it, but the animal went berserk.

Luckily it was a couch that bit him and not Beth.

She recalled to PEOPLE: “And people didn’t think the alligator was moving enough, and it didn’t look real enough.

“It was very real, so they started pushing him, and he went crazy, and he turned around and missed me by an inch and bit the couch and wouldn’t let go.

“I was like, okay, it could be my leg. Okay, let’s not poke the alligator again.”

Turns out this wasn’t the only “crazy” incident involving an animal.

In addition to a lion breaking through an electric fence and running free, the show’s costume designer had to fight with a chicken to dress him in a tuxedo.

Beth recalls, “One day I was walking from my trailer to the set and I hear this crazy commotion in the costume room, and I look in, and our costume designer Diane is trying to measure a chicken for a tuxedo, and this chicken didn’t want to wear a tuxedo.

“It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I thought, who else goes to work and sees that?”

She added: “I mean, it’s a singular experience.

“And he ended up wearing that tuxedo, that’s what he did. But I don’t think he liked it.”

These days, studios rely on technology like CGI for these kinds of scenes, but Beth said they’re having more fun creating “magic out of nothing.”

She said: “It was a crazy spectacle. You had to film everything in real time, with practical effects and all that. It was quite an experience that you can never forget.

“That’s how the show was, you made magic out of molehills… you made magic out of nothing.”