Melissa McCarthy recovering after being bitten by huntsman spider in Australia
By Penny Burfitt
Australia is teeming with international celebrities of late, but what many of them may not have realised is that it's also still teeming with thousands of species of spiders.
US comedian Melissa McCarthy found out about the underbelly of creepy crawlies the hard way, revealing in a recent Instagram post that she's had a run in with the huntsman.
The Bridesmaids star has been in Australia filming TV series Nine Perfect Strangers, and Thor: Love and Thunder, and recently shared that she was bitten by a huntsman while on location.
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Huntsmans are known for their frightening size and hairy bodies, but are in fact only mildly venomous and pose no real threat to humans, though bites can be painful.
Nevertheless, it seems the Hollywood star was somewhat put out by her encounter, sharing videos of herself swathed in towels doubling as bandages, lying in bed after apparently being bitten.
Splicing an excerpt from a recent interview with InStyle magazine, the actress is first pictured in a floral dress saying: "I love that all the bugs and creatures will kill you".
The next shot is of her sprawled on a bed in the aforementioned 'bandages', captioned 'Exhibit A'.
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In the caption, she explained that after making the flippant remark she was reminded by 'a friend' that those bug and creatures bites she joked about can be seriously painful.
Hundreds of her fans flooded the comments, in stitches over the post, but also trepidatious about following McCarthy Down Under in future.
"So does that mean you take it back?" Laura Brown wrote.
"I. Would. Die. Omg," Octavia Spencer wrote.
"That’s one of the ONLY spiders here that won’t kill you," an Aussie fan laughed.
"Those spiders are what keep me from ever wanting to go there," another fan wrote.
McCarthy is starring alongside Nicole Kidman in Nine Perfect Strangers, and adaptation of bestselling author Liane Moriarty's book.
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