Elizabeth Banks Reveals She Ate a 6-Foot-Tall Chocolate Bar for New Series

In ‘The Miniature Wife,’ the actress she plays the wife of a scientist (Matthew Macfadyen) who accidentally shrinks her character to six inches tall

NEED TO KNOW

• Elizabeth Banks stars in Peacock’s The Miniature Wife as a woman shrunk to six inches tall by her scientist husband
• The show features oversized props like a 30-foot toilet plunger and a six-foot edible Hershey bar
• Banks says the series uses humor to explore relatable feelings of being diminished in relationships or professional life

Elizabeth Banks’ role in The Miniature Wife involved working with giant props.

During a visit to The Kelly Clarkson Show, the actress, 52, opened up about filming the Peacock series, in which she plays the wife of a scientist (Matthew Macfadyen) who accidentally shrinks her character to six inches tall.

“I would watch a scene with him and he would have a prop, like he would have a coffee mug or at one point, a toilet plunger. And then I would walk into a room, and there would be a two-and-a-half story toilet plunger, exact replica, like 30 feet tall that now I’m gonna interact with,” she explained.

The actress, who filmed the scenes against a green screen, added that the props department was “amazing like that.”

In fact, they even created oversized versions of foods featured on the show.

“They also made me a six-foot tall Hershey bar that was actually edible that I could nibble on for like a week,” Banks said. “And I barely made a dent in it.”

“They made a popcorn kernel that was like this big,” she added. ”One kernel of popcorn.”

“That was edible,” she noted as the popcorn was shown onscreen. “I ate that. It was made out of sugar. And doesn’t it look amazing?”

During the segment, Banks also reflected on what appealed to her about the series, which premiered on April 9.

“It’s a very funny show,” she said. “But what I really was drawn to was we get to sort of talk about a big feeling, which is feeling diminished by a partner. Or, you know, in your professional life, your romantic life, I think we all have that relatable experience of being made to feel small every once in a while.

And in this case, it’s literal,” Banks continued. “And physical. And we get to sort of look at that from an absurdist lens, but talk about some, you know, really big issue that I think people understand.”