Quentin Tarantino brutally names two actors he fired from Inglourious Basterds
In a new book about the making of the movie Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino has named two actors he fired from the production of the film, though he's said he loves them both.
You know it as the one where World War Two ends slightly differently as the Nazis get killed by a combination of dynamite, bullets and fire.
If you'd like to know more about it then Jay Glennie's new book The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds dives into how the film came together, with plenty of contributions from the famous director.
Tarantino, who has never been particularly shy about calling out actors, namechecked two he fired from the film for different reasons, saying that both Mélanie Laurent and Isabelle Huppert got the boot for different reasons.
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"Mélanie Laurent’s table read was terrible," Tarantino told the book.
"It wasn’t good enough to be terrible... 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. Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her."
If you know your Inglourious Basterds then you'll remember that Mélanie Laurent is in the movie as Shosanna, the cinema owner who plots to burn the place down with the Nazi high command trapped inside.
That's because she insisted that she had simply felt unwell on the day of the table read and insisted she be given another shot, telling him she'd fly out and wait until he was ready to see her again, and threatened to keep turning up to the set to prove she was the right woman for the role.
Tarantino relented and gave her three days of rehearsals to prove she really was right for the part, and she did.
“I love Mélanie 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," he said.
"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."
As for Huppert, she was meant to play the part of Ada Mimieux, who shelters Shosanna in Paris and then leaves her the cinema where the movie's final act takes place.
Tarantino claimed that Huppert 'didn't show up' for the table read.
He said: "So f**k it. I fired her. I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert — ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and all that — but there were issues with her contract. It just kept stalling. And then not coming to the table read. Well, we cast Maggie instead.
"That invariably happens. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re cast and you are not at that table, I don’t owe you jack s**t! You can be fired, especially if I get excited by what somebody else did in your absence."
The role went to Maggie Cheung, who Tarantino said was 'fantastic', but ended up being cut entirely from Inglourious Basterds because the director thought 'just didn’t need to know how Shosanna acquired the cinema' as he could just cut to four years later and her explaining it.
LADbible Group have contacted representatives of Mélanie Laurent and Isabelle Huppert for comment.
Topics: Quentin Tarantino, Film, Celebrity
Joe Harker
