Halle Berry has spoken about the time she called out X-Men director Bryan Singer on set for his behaviour.
She's appearing in new film Crime 101 alongside the likes of Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo and Barry Keoghan, and while speaking to Entertainment Weekly about the movie she said her experience in dealing with sexism, racism and ageism drew her to the role.
Berry said: "I thought, wow, I have an opportunity here to put in film something that I'm wildly passionate about personally.
"And that's not always the case when you take on a character. Sometimes they're so far from you. It's nice to get into a new skin and experience something different, but this was so me.
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"My struggle with this character was because it was so me, how do I make it feel like a character and not feel like it was Halle up there just having her say, right?
"But then I realized along the way it was okay to have it be a little bit me, a little bit Sharon, because my say feels really important in the world for women right now. And so I just leaned into that, and [director] Bart [Layton] let me lean into that and let that part of me shine through."
At a point in the film her character Sharon tears into her boss with a vocal tirade, and Berry said she had been able to do something similar in real life while on the set of the second X-Men movie.
Berry explained she 'got to tell Bryan Singer just where to go and how to get there' in an incident which was notable enough for Alan Cumming to include in his memoir.
Explaining what happened on set, she said: "Everybody was mad, but they all said to me, 'Halle, you go tell 'em,' because they knew I would.
"And it's one of the greatest days on a set, telling someone who was wronging the entire crew, the entire cast, exactly where to go. And then I got on a plane and flew home with my X-Men suit on."
She said 'that guy deserved it', and in the version Alan Cumming wrote about she is claimed to have told the director 'you can kiss my black ass'.
In a report from the Hollywood Reporter in 2020 they cited sources which claimed the alleged incident occurred after the director fell out with producer Tom DeSanto.
They reported that the producer tried to end shooting after learning the director and some crew members had taken a narcotic and he was concerned someone on set would be injured during filming of a stunt featuring most of the cast.
They reported that the stunt was supposed to be filmed the following day so the stunt coordinator was not present and things went wrong leaving Hugh Jackman bleeding, with the cast confronting the director and Berry allegedly tearing into Singer.
A representative for Bryan Singer told the Hollywood Reporter 'nothing like that ever happened'.
The LADbible Group have contacted Bryan Singer's representatives for comment.
Topics: Celebrity, TV and Film, X-Men, Hugh Jackman
Joe Harker