Remember that episode of Friends when Monica got stung by a jellyfish on the beach and a good friend of hers had to embarrassingly urinate on her? It was shown that urine helps relieve the great pain of a jellyfish sting. Most of us thought that incident was written into the episode for laughs. It turns out people have resorted to that trick in real life as well. On Kelly Clarkson's show, actor Jake Gyllenhaal shared a laugh while recalling a lifeguarding incident that led him to pee on a beachgoer for some relief. The actor appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show on April 21, 2023 to promote his upcoming film, The Covenant, directed by Guy Ritchie. 

During one segment, the two discussed their previous "normal" jobs and Gyllenhaal told a story about his days as a teen lifeguard that had Clarkson in stitches, according to Today. Clarkson asked the actor to clarify his role after he revealed that he used to be a lifeguard. He explained that his job entailed keeping pedestrians at a public beach away from a nearby private beach. "It wasn't like Baywatch, necessarily," he described. "So you were the person to remind them of what level they were at," Clarkson jokingly clarified as the audience chuckled. Gyllenhaal went on to recount an incident at work that required him to go above and beyond the call of duty when someone was stung by a jellyfish.

The actor offered the hurt beachgoer his own pee. "You peed on yourself or someone?" Clarkson objected before Gyllenhaal insisted that the idea of peeing on the stung person came from someone else. Before Clark burst out laughing, Gyllenhaal defended by saying, "They told me that that was what you had to do and a person was in pain. I suggested that they — that we should — use pee and at that point, you know, the pain of a jellyfish sting. They wanted it. They would take anything, really."  As both the audience and Clarkson laughed their guts out, the actor clarified that he didn't actually pee on the person, to which Clarkson replied that he peed in a cup. "It was their choice," Gyllenhaal added, and also shared that he's "willing to (do whatever to) save a life." 

How kind of Gyllenhaal but does this trick actually work? According to the Cleveland Clinic, peeing on jellyfish is a common myth because jellyfish have stingers that release venom that causes human skin to itch. However, because pee is made of water, the clinic claims that "peeing on a jellyfish sting can actually cause stinging cells to release even more venom." Turns out the person who Gyllenhaal tried to help went through all that for nothing.