Panic overcame a live television studio on Friday during an interview with Oscar winner Christoph Waltz at the Cannes Film Festival when a man fired a gun and threatened to ignite a grenade, reports the Los Angeles Times.
Waltz and fellow actor Daniel Auteuil were being interviewed on Le Grand Journal, a French nightly news and entertainment show that broadcasts every day during the festival, as gun shots were heard in the audience and a man started threatening to pull a grenade. No one was hurt in the incident and authorities later discovered that the man fired blanks and the grenade was a fake. Police quickly arrived and took the man into custody. More information on the man is not yet available.
“It really appears to be a crazy guy,” a police source said.
Waltz told the Daily Mail that he feared for his life for a brief moment during the scare.
“I was on a panel at the Studio Canal platform off the beach when a man produced a gun,” he said. “I think it was a pistol and he fired but luckily for me they were blanks.”
This is the second security incident that happened on the third day of the 12-day festival. A police source said jewelery was stolen from a room at the Suite Novotel hotel overnight on Thursday.