WEST HARTFORD – If watchful viewers of the upcoming Timothée Chalamet film “Marty Supreme” or season three of “The Walking Dead: Dead City” spot any rats, it might be the work of Sara Horwitz.
Horwitz, a West Hartford native and Middletown resident who works at Pratt & Whitney, had the opportunity to work as a rat handler on the sets of both productions.
Her love for animals goes back to childhood – spending time with animals at West Hartford’s Westmoor Park and Canton’s Roaring Brook Nature Center. She turned that into a career, spending seven years working with animals at the Children’s Museum in West Hartford and researching reptiles and amphibians. But she never expected that love for animals to bring her into the entertainment industry.
She made the connection through her friend, Mark Lotterhand, who owns the rats they worked with on both productions.
“When I was on ‘The Kelly Clarkson Show’ with the snakes, there was an animal agent,” Horwitz said about her appearance last year on the talk show. “I told her if she ever needed a unique animal in the area, I have friends that have all sorts of animals from rats to alligators and I could help put her in contact.”
The rats that Sara Horwitz worked with as a rat handler on the set of “The Walking Dead” are owned by her friend Mark Lotterhand, who worked on the show eight times. (Courtesy of Sara Horwitz)
Lotterhand worked on “The Walking Dead” spinoff show eight times – but the last time he was set to be on set, in Brockton, Mass., they wanted more rats than before, so he called in Horwitz, who has experience handling all sorts of animals.
“We worked together with the team to collaborate and keep the rats safe and keep them contained and have them run around on a zombie, which was a puppet,” Horwitz said. “It was filled with garbage and all these leaves and of course the rats liked to hide. In between each scene everyone had to be patient and we had to collect all the rats.”
Safety, Horwitz said, was paramount for her and Lotterhand, who considers the rats, which have names like Ash, Snoopy, Midnight, Dumbo, Streak and Liquorice, to be family pets.
“That was the most important thing to me while I was on set – making sure that the animals were safe,” Horwitz said. “The first thing we had to do was go through and make sure there was no way to escape. We worked alongside the animal rights people. Everyone takes the job very seriously and that was very important to us that none of them got hurt.”
While on “The Walking Dead” set, Horwitz worked alongside actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jimmi Simpson, two stars of the show.
“I’m literally inside a 10-foot Plexiglass container with them trying to catch rats and stand behind them while I’m doing the scenes,” Horwitz said. “It’s surreal and gives you a lot of appreciation for what goes on behind the scenes.”
Sara Horwitz holds a large racer snake. Horwitz, a West Hartford native, recently appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show to talk about the animal. (Contributed photo / Mark Lotterhand)
But maybe the coolest part about the experience, Horwitz said, is that it continued her mission of making certain animals that people have aversions to – like rats and snakes – the star of the show.
“They were the real stars there,” Horwitz said. “The rats became the celebrity. When some of the actors went home, the fans were so excited to pet the rats that worked alongside Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jimmi Simpson. These are the same rats you see that you might not appreciate and now we had people lined up to pet them.”
Horwitz isn’t sure how the rat scenes exactly turned out in both “Marty Supreme,” which she shot last year, and “The Walking Dead: Dead City,” which she shot earlier this month. But she’s hopeful that fans will get to see her and Lotterhand’s work.
“If they see any of the scenes with rats in them, there’s a good chance they belong to my friend,” Horwitz said. “It’ll be exciting to see how it turns out and what scenes they use because we redid it a few times. I would love to considered to do it again in the future. It was thrilling.”
This article originally published at CT woman worked as rat handler on new Timothée Chalamet movie and ‘The Walking Dead: Dead City’.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
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