OK! Exclusive: James Maslow Dishes on Working With a Snake in Tonight's Episode of 'Big Time Rush!'

OK!: We hear Gavin DeGraw is guest-starring on tonight's episode. Was he cool?

James Maslow: So we actually did a scene together, but I never met him. You ask how that’s possible. It’s only a single camera show, so it’s like filming a movie where you can shoot one direction and the rest of it is crew. They had a stand-in read my lines. Then they have to turnaround, set camera and lights and it’s a whole ordeal. And by the time that happens, I came out thinking like, "Oh I get to meet him!" but he left like an hour previously. It's kind of funny that the two guys who weren’t in the scene with him met him and the two of us who were never even got to meet the guy. The friends I know that are his friends say he’s a great guy, but I never met him so I couldn’t tell ya. But thanks for being on my show though dude, appreciate it.

OK!: James buys a snake in this episode? Discuss.

JM: Yeah, I decide to spend my money, our bonus in the episode on a snake. I’m not really afraid of animals and actually I dig snakes and it was cool at first, but after a week of having that thing like, wrapped around my throat and just hissing....The snake handler is like crocodile hunter, like the nicest guy, but he’s like bat s*** crazy. He’s like sitting there tapping it on the head and I’m like, “don’t do that!” I was pretty cool with it, but it was worse for the actors around me because they had to be in a scene with me. I’m like holding its head and it’s going, “ssssssss.” It scared the crap out of some people.

OK!: Did the snake make it really difficult to film the scene?

JM: No, they wrote it and the day before we were shooting they double-checked like, “You’re cool with this right?” They know me, I’m really not going to say no to anything, I’m pretty cool. That’s why production laughed when I said, “If it bites me I’m going to be rich.” If this one bit you it would hurt, but it wouldn’t, well it’s got an inch and a half fang, but it’s not gonna kill you. But that’s why you’ve got a snake trainer there so hopefully before I passed out he would come and help me out. (laughs).

OK!: What do the other three guys buy with their bonuses? Anything as crazy as a snake?

JM: Logan just tips everybody, which is actually pretty funny, he gets so into tipping that he just spends all his money. Kendall invests in stocks and someone like, misses the orange stock and actually buys $5,000 worth of oranges, so that’s a pretty funny storyline. Carlos in some ways is wise with it and hires an assistant which is a good use of your money when you have no time, except he overpaid the assistant. Although his guy kind of ends up working out, so it’s a funny storyline. It comes full circle at the end of it and it was fun to film.