Actors Who Refused To Shoot Scenes Together
As anyone who shows up to work in the same place day after day can attest, tension with that one coworker who just gets under your skin with everything they say or do can be simply unavoidable. And Hollywood sets are hotbeds for high tempers. Rifts between co-stars are nothing new, after all. On the set of the 1959 Hollywood classic Some Like it Hot, Tony Curtis was so annoyed by his co-star Marilyn Monroe's antics that he reportedly likened kissing her to "kissing Hitler" (though he later claimed the comparison was "a joke"). And there's an entire series dedicated to the legendary cat fight between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, aptly titled Feud.
In the following contemporary cases, not only did co-stars not get along, they refused to even share the same screen. We can only imagine the pleasant working conditions that created for everyone else, but we digress. Let's dive in to see who couldn't bear to shoot simultaneously.
The Rock Versus the Candy Asses
Rumors of a feud between actors Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Vin Diesel made headlines in 2016 when Johnson took to Instagram in a since-removed post (via Vanity Fair) to complain about his experience filming the eighth incarnation of the Fast & Furious franchise. He noted that his female co-stars are "always amazing," though regrettably his male co-stars "are a different story. Some conduct themselves as stand up men and true professionals ... The ones that don't are too chicken s**t to do anything about it anyway. Candy asses." Hoo boy.
It became evident who the candy ass in question was in 2018, when Johnson confirmed to Rolling Stone that he and Diesel didn't film any scenes together during the shooting of The Fate of the Furious. He explained, "What I came to realize is that we have a fundamental difference in philosophies on how we approach movie making and collaborating. It took me some time, but I'm grateful for that clarity. Whether we work together again or not." The Rock did add, however, "I wish him all the best, and I harbor no ill will there ... Actually, you can erase that last part about 'no ill will.' We'll just keep it with the clarity."
All clarified, and we won't be expecting that buddy comedy anytime soon.
Game of feuding exes
Game of Thrones has about a million plot lines and characters, so it's not too surprising that certain actors don't cross paths during the show's filming. However, eagle-eyed critics were quick to speculate on why Lena Headey, who plays evil Queen Cersie Lannister, and Jerome Flynn, who portrays her brother/lover's guard Bronn, never shared any screen time (save one brief scene in season three, as Refinery29 notes).
The alleged reason? According to The Telegraph, Headey and Flynn were a couple off-screen way back in 2002, and in the wake of an ugly split refused to be in the same room. A source told the paper, "Jerome and Lena aren't on speaking terms any more and they are never in the same room at the same time ... It's a pity because they appeared to have patched things up for a while, but now the word is they should be kept apart at all costs." Sounds fun.
The Good Wife? Sure. Good friends? Not so much.
Up through season two of The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies and Archie Panjabi's characters (Alicia Florrick and Kalinda Sharma, respectively) were best friends, until it was revealed that Kalinda had once slept with Alicia's husband. After that, as The Hollywood Reporter noted, "the two famously went long stretches without sharing scenes together."
According to Vogue, a long-rumored feud between the co-stars may have played a role in the plot twist, and been the real reason why the actresses no longer shared screen-time. Although the actresses initially denied any problems on set, the show's season six finale, in which the characters "reunite," set tongues wagging when it became apparent they hadn't in fact shot the big reunion scene together.
After Margulies confirmed that the episode had indeed been shot separately due, in her words, to Panjabi filming TV show The Fall at the same time, Panjabi tweeted, "@TheFallTV was not even in production at that time and I was in New York ready to film the scene!" Sounds like there might be a lot more to this particular split-screen story.
Wesley snipes at the entire cast of Blade: Trinity
Actor Wesley Snipes has faced his fair share of drama over the years, and it sounds like it was ever present on the set of 2004's Blade: Trinity. According to an AV Club interview with comedian Patton Oswalt, Snipes' co-star on the third installment of the Blade series, Snipes was decidedly less than friendly to his fellow actors. Among the anecdotes Oswalt recounted were tales of Snipes refusing to leave his trailer, smoking marijuana all day, and attempting to strangle the film's director.
Additionally, per Oswalt's interview, Snipes apparently refused to film any scenes at all with his fellow actors for the most part. Oswalt explained to the AV Club that Snipes only arrived on set "for close-ups. Everything else was done by his stand-in. I only did one scene with him." Tempers allegedly boiled over to the point that the film's director, David Goyer, asked Snipes to quit, after which point Snipes selected Post-it notes as his mode of communication with Goyer. And yet, Oswalt insisted, "That was an example of a very troubled shoot that we made fun. You have to find a way to make it fun."
Amen to that.
When Magic Mike goes too far
We'll take this whole story with a grain of salt, but here goes. According to an anonymous extra on the set of 2013 film This is the End (who posted the account on a since-deleted Tumblr page picked up by Pop Focal), actress Emma Watson was so offended by a scene she was slated to shoot with an almost-nude Channing Tatum break dancing in a thong that she walked off set and refused to continue filming.
Per the extra, "Emma knew [Tatum] was going to be in a thong and everyone knows he used to be a stripper. So things were starting to get raunchy. Emma steps on set and looks at the scene and all of us in it and kind of has a freak out moment ... Before we started to film she stormed off set with her publicist ... Then she came back and filmed about 3 minutes of the scene." The extra alleged that Watson then left the set because Tatum's behavior was "too raunchy."
James Franco seemed to substantiate the account in a 2013 interview with Mila Kunis for Interview, saying, "This actress — I won't say who, but she had a smaller role in the film — walked off the movie in the middle of a scene ... What was going on around her was, I guess, too extreme for her ... And she said, 'Yeah, I've got to leave.'"
On-set trouble loves Roberts and Nolte
1994's I Love Trouble, starring Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte, hasn't exactly earned status in the pantheon of romantic comedies, and it seems likely that the chilly relations between its key players might have had something to do with its cool reception. Numerous sources from the movie's set alleged to the Los Angeles Times that the two co-stars simply couldn't stand one another. The paper noted that "Roberts reportedly wasn't thrilled with Nolte's machismo, so she would deride and insult her co-star. Some on the set claim that he became so annoyed with her attitude that he would do things to agitate her even more."
According to the Los Angeles Times, the conflict eventually meant that the stars couldn't even film together, as "the discord was so intense ... the two played more to stand-ins than to each other." After filming wrapped, Roberts also told The New York Times that while the actor could be "charming and nice, he's also completely disgusting." Nolte responded (via The Atlantic) by saying "It's not nice to call someone 'disgusting.' But she's not a nice person. Everyone knows that."
Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton refused to reunite onscreen after Twister
Helen Hunt has been honest about the fact that filming 1996's tornado-chasing blockbuster Twister "was terrifying." She told HuffPost in 2015 that the story was "so much more ... real than you think" because of the techniques used — which included a hail machine and fire hose — adding that since it was "not the safest way to make a movie, [she] was really happy to make it through in one piece." That experience would justify Hunt being hesitant to film scenes for Universal Studios' Twister... Ride It Out ride, however, it turns out that there was another reason she wasn't keen on the situation.
While the rumors have "never been confirmed," according to Screen Crush, "the reports on many (many) websites claim that by the end of shooting, [fellow Twister star Bill] Paxton and Hunt hated each other so much that they only agreed to appear 'together' in Twister... Ride It Out separately." Anyone who's been on the ride will know that "Paxton and Hunt share duties describing the beauty of tornadoes and the difficulties of shooting Twister." However, they're never in the same frame together, but instead, deliver "alternat[ing] lines" in recordings that were shot in "two different ... locations."
Be that as it may, Paxton, who died in 2017, did once say that he wanted to direct a Twister sequel starring Hunt, Screen Crush notes. While that version never came to be, a reboot of the storm-chasing film may still touch down sometime in the future.
Björk reportedly spit at director and potential castmate Lars von Trier
Lars von Trier is a controversial figure in Hollywood. Along with having "a reputation for being tough on his actors," per CNN, he was banned from the Cannes Film Festival for seven years "after jokingly declaring himself a Nazi and expressing sympathy for Adolf Hitler during a 2011 press conference," according to The Guardian. When he made his return in 2018, over 100 people walked out of his screening of The House That Jack Built, because it was "Gross. Pretentious. Vomitive. Torturous. Pathetic."
Björk might have similar opinions about von Trier and his work as a result of her experience working on 2000's Dancer in the Dark, which he directed. The two were supposed to appear in a scene together, according to Cheat Sheet. However, that didn't happen, because she apparently hated him and would not only tell him that every morning — "Mr. von Trier, I despise you" — but would also reportedly spit at him, CNN notes. As for the cause of her hatred, Björk revealed on Facebook in 2017 that she had been sexually harassed by a Danish film director. While she didn't name von Trier, the Chicago Tribune points out that "coverage of her on-set relationship with [the director] verifies that she [was] referring to him."
In the end, Björk won the best actress honor at Cannes for her role, and von Trier earned the coveted Palme d'Or. Despite that, it seems safe to say that they won't be working together ever again.
Sylvester Stallone refused to film with Richard Gere following a messy incident
Did you know that Sylvester Stallone and Richard Gere were supposed to appear in 1974's The Lords of Flatbush together? That is, until Gere left Stallone seriously unimpressed. Although Gere was originally cast as Chico, Stallone told Ain't It Cool News in 2006 that they "never hit it off." On top of the fact that, he claimed that Gere "would strut around in his oversized motorcycle jacket like he was the baddest knight at the round table," "got a little carried away" while they were improvising a fight scene, and was "impossible to deal with."
Then, according to Rocky himself, this allegedly happened: "I was eating a hotdog [in the backseat of a car] and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper." After Stallone warned Gere that his meal was "going to drip all over the place" and told the other man that he was "gonna know about it" if it got on Stallone's pants, Gere apparently brushed him off. Gere then reportedly "proceed[ed] to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on [the other actor's] thigh."
"I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car," Stallone recalled. "The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay. Richard was given his walking papers and to this day seriously dislikes me."
Julie McCullough's Playboy photos upset Growing Pains' Kirk Cameron
Television fans may remember Julie McCullough as Julie Costello, the family nanny who became the love interest of Kirk Cameron's character, Mike Seaver, on Growing Pains. While the two made a cute couple onscreen, the actor — who's a conservative, evangelical Christian, along with being highly controversial — apparently refused to work with her anymore, because she had posed nude for Playboy, according to People.
The photos, "taken between 1984 and '85," appeared on the covers of the February 1985 and September 1986 issues of the magazine. McCullough was also the February 1986 centerfold, before appearing in the October 1989 issue. According to buzz, Cameron was so offended by the photos, that despite the fact that his character was supposed to marry the woman McCullough played, that didn't happen.
However, show producer Dan Guntzelman told People back in 1989 that there were no wedding plans to begin with. He did admit that he "wasn't fond of the publicity" regarding the Playboy pics, but explained that he had wanted to cast "a sweet-girl-next-door," and still felt like McCullough fit that description. "If you start knocking out actresses who have appeared in the buff, there will be a lot of all-male shows on the air," he said.
Guntzelman may have been willing to keep McCullough around, but she revealed that the tabloids wrote "a lot of not-nice things" about her, and she was booted from the show not long after.