Quentin Tarantino has revealed that he fired both Mélanie Laurent and Isabelle Huppert from Inglourious Basterds after a disastrous table read.
Speaking to author Jay Glennie for his new book The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the director revealed that he originally fired Shosanna Dreyfus actor Mélanie Laurent from the project.
“The most exciting day of preproduction for me is the table read. That is the closest I get to seeing the movie for the first time, so a table read with the whole cast is so exciting and so important to me. Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her,” said Tarantino (via Variety).
Days later, Laurent reached back out and asked for another chance, which Tarantino agreed to.
“Let me just go on the record for everybody to know: I love Mélanie,” Tarantino added. “If we were not talking about the making of Inglourious Basterds, I would never think about the table read again for the simple reason Mélanie is my Shosanna. She did a wonderful job. But we have decided to dive deep into the making of the movie with this book, and this is an important part of its history.”
Meanwhile, Tarantino revealed that originally Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who shelters Shosanna in Paris, was supposed to be played by Isabella Huppert. However, she didn’t show up to the table read. “So f*** it. I fired her.”
“I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert but there were issues with her contract. It just kept stalling. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re cast and you are not at that table, I don’t owe you jack s***! You can be fired, especially if I get excited by what somebody else did in your absence.” Instead the part went to Maggie Cheung before the character was ultimately cut from the final film.
“I have no moral compass when it comes to giving roles to actors: They have to be right. They have to feel like they are right for the world I have created,” Tarantino added. “ I don’t owe them s***. I owe my film the best actors I can find.”
Later this month The Further Mis-Adventures Of Cliff Booth, a sequel to Tarantino’s 2019 filmOnce Upon A Time In Hollywood, will hit IMAX screens before arriving on Netflix. The movie will be directed by David Fincher, from a script written by Tatantino. However Fincher has said the original screenplay needed huge cuts to make it filmable.“The first draft I read was 230 pages. It was essentially two movies.”
Next year, Quentin Tarantino’s first-ever play The Popinjay Cavalier will premiere in the West End, with Sacha Baron Cohen set to lead the “swashbuckling comedy”
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