Jay Hernandez Could Have Drowned On Set

We are living in an era of superhero movies. But this summer, DC Comics and Warner Bros. are bringing audiences a whole new crop of supervillains in David Ayer's Suicide Squad . We'll meet Jared Leto's The Joker, who seems to be a sexier, shirtless-er, and overall more rock n' roll version of the iconic baddie. We'll be introduced to Margot Robbie's sultry yet psychotic Harley Quinn, Will Smith's revengeful Deadshot, and so many more. One antihero we have yet to see an onscreen rendition of is El Diablo, a Los Angeles native who has a penchant for starting fires. Jay Hernandez takes on the villain with an ultradark past, and on set of the film in June of 2015, he opened up about how his character's superpower could have led to his watery death.

El Diablo, along with the other members of the Suicide Squad, are locked up in Arkham Asylum. And because El Diablo has the gift of fire, his cell is a chamber that fills up with water — a precaution to ensure the inmate doesn't try anything funny. "There's a great scene where I'm locked up and they're extracting me from my cell, and I'm about to sort of cause some havoc, and they flood it," the 38-year-old actor says. "It's a massive steel tube that fills up with water, and the entire thing fills up in a mater of seconds. It's like five seconds, and it's gotta be like a thousand gallons or more."

And though they could have opted for special effects, they didn't, and Hernandez is in the middle of the tube when it floods with water. I sure hope he can swim.

"It was massive, and it was intimidating. But they did have a fire-bar in there. So there was fire going, and then this thing floods in a matter of five seconds. So I'm trying to sell that I'm drowning, right? And I didn't really have to work too hard because I was almost drowning," he admits. "They're like, 'No, the water's supposed to stop here.' Then the water actually went above the mark that it was supposed to stop at. Luckily there was like, kind of an escape hatch."

Yikes! Fingers crossed the cameras were rolling and caught Hernandez' accidental method acting on tape.

See this scene, along with Hernandez' fiery powers when Suicide Squad hits theaters on August 5.

Images: Warner Bros.; Tumblr