How to Get Away With Murder’s Five Most Jaw-Dropping Moments

Shawna Malcom January 26, 2015, 5:00 am

How to Get Away With Murder is loaded with WTF moments — with more soon to come when the show returns to ABC this week (Jan. 29 at 10/9c). Here, show insiders give the inside scoop on on five twists that still have fans reeling.

“Why is your penis on a dead girl’s phone?”

Executive producer Pete Nowalk says of the shocking question Annalise asks her cheating hubby, “I knew it was over the top, but I’d never heard it before. That’s a lot of what we do in the writers’ room: ‘Have we ever seen or heard this?’ We like to go big. It made us laugh, so we went with it.”

Eager to impress boss Annalise, Connor obtains a key piece of evidence by seducing an IT whiz.

“Pete’s done a service by writing a show that depicts different relationships in a real way,” says Jack Falahee(above, left), who plays Connor, adding, “It’s great that viewers love Connor and like seeing his romances—even if he is kind of a sociopath!”

Bonnie hooks up with Asher.

Later, Annalise’s associate rejects the student nicknamed Doucheface, a development that will prompt him in an upcoming episode “to use the sex against her as a potential sexual-harassment lawsuit,” teases Matt McGorry, who plays Asher.

Wes bashes in Sam’s skull, covering Rebecca in blood.

“Filming that scene was really difficult and took a long time to get right,” says Katie Findlay, who plays Rebecca. “Makeup was standing by to spray me [with splatter], but enough didn’t get on me the first time. So they loaded up two giant, ominous paintbrushes. It wasn’t hard to act freaked out.”

Annalise knows.

When Wes goes back to Annalise’s house to retrieve the Lady Justice statuette, he finds her there with Sam’s corpse, a chilling development that had Davis feeling torn: “Part of you is thinking, ‘I don’t want to be demonized that way.’ But it was so delicious to play.”

How to Get Away With Murder returns Thursday, January 29, 10/9c, ABC

“People might think I picked this scene because the Satan storyline was so incredibly memorable — and it was — but I have a much more personal reason,” says Hall. “We shot the fire on the day my son, Tully, was born. Just hours before we were supposed to start the scene, his surrogate mother called me and said, ‘I’m in labor!’ I ran to [executive producer] Tom Langan and said, ‘I know you got a church to burn, but I got a baby to birth! How soon can we get this done?'”

Langan quickly rejiggered the shooting schedule, hoping to capture the inferno in one take. “It was epic,” Hall recalls. “We had the fire marshals there, extinguishers at the ready, and everyone but me and the minimal crew were ordered off the stage. So the church goes up in flames, I stand there with my arms spread out in triumph, enjoying the evil glory of it all, and the whole time I’m listening so hard for Tom to say, ‘We have it.’ I’m, like, ‘Tom, please say it, please say it! And finally he does. ‘We have it!’ And, without missing a beat, I leaped over everything in the way, ran to my dressing room, grabbed my bag, and headed off to the hospital in my fire-retardant clothes. And, yes, I got there in time for the birth of my son. A happy ending!”

No soap storyline ever topped Marlena’s possession for sheer audaciousness — before or since. “It was a spectacular time for our show and it kicked off a new era in daytime,” Halls says. “Thousands upon thousands of young people were flocking to Days and loved it. [Head writer] Jim Reilly, who was a deeply religious man, was burning down Christmas trees and making Marlena levitate on Christmas Eve, which was the craziest scene of all. I’m still not allowed to say how it was done because I signed a nondisclosure agreement, but I did levitate. That wasn’t fancy camera work. It wasn’t done by computer like they do now. It was a real stunt.”