THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - Eagle eyes were not required to see a giant cockroach crawling across the wall in full view on the brightly lit set. The roach’s debut on The Talkmanaged to pass with no media attention and only a few screen grabs of the moment posted on YouTube and Twitter. Doug Yanega, senior museum scientist of the Entomology Research Museum at UC Riverside, tells THR that seeing a lone roach on the set of a TV or film production is likely not an indication of an infestation or nearby horde of relatives.
“It’s an adult roach — blurry as it is, it clearly has its wings — and adult roaches can fly, quite well, and they typically do so at night when they’re most active. Because they fly, and because they’re attracted to lights at night, like most nocturnal insects, they will find their way into many places very easily. As such, seeing an adult American roach is vastly less of a concern than it would be if the roach was a nymph or a wingless species,” the insect expert tells THR, adding that the bugs often feel quite comfy in spaces like sets that can be dark and cool. “It could easily have been by itself, rather than some evil harbinger of a hidden horde.”