Paul Bettany says he once left his Avengers: Infinity War script on a plane

“I’ve never told anybody this, but I once left the entire script for Infinity War on a plane,” Bettany said to Virgin Radio UK while promoting his upcoming Disney+ series VisionQuest. “I got off the plane, and I was in my car, and I went, ‘Oh… oh… oh no!'” The actor was perhaps attempting to sympathize with co-star Emily Hampshire, who had confessed seconds earlier that she may have thrown away script pages for VisionQuest without realizing the severity of the professional gaffe. “When I was going into the MCU, I didn’t realize I was going into the Witness Protection Program,” Hampshire joked (we assume). “When you get the scripts on the set, you get the sides, which are the scenes you’re going to do during the day. Um… you have to give them back at the end of the day on [VisionQuest]. Normally, you don’t. And if you don’t give them back, [Marvel sends] someone to your house to get them! I didn’t know they were precious. I probably threw them out!” she said.

It’s no secret that Marvel Studios employs extreme measures to keep plot details of upcoming productions under wraps. Actors are sometimes required to read scripts in a secure, windowless room, like they were part of a CIA debriefing; their social media is policed by the studio to ensure that even a whiff of behind-the-scenes secrecy isn’t posted online; oftentimes, only partial script access is made available to them on set; Marvel has even been in the practice of shredding script pages after their use. Given all that, it’s no wonder Bettany expressed solidarity with Hampshire while also expressing the terror an Avenger might feel if they accidentally drop secret Marvel property in the wild. Fortunately for the actor, he was paired with an especially savvy greeter (the folks who help celebrities and other VIPs navigate onerous spaces like airports), who went inside the airport and came back with the script safe and sound. “I was lucky to have had a greeter that was a genius,” he said, “and I got the greeter to go in and get it. And I tipped [them] like 500 bucks.”