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Quentin Tarantino says he initially fired Melanie Laurent from 'Inglourious Basterds'
Quentin Tarantino says he initially fired Melanie Laurent from 'Inglourious Basterds'
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Los Angeles, Quentin Tarantino has revealed that he initially fired Melanie Laurent from 'Inglourious Basterds' as he was not impressed with her performance at the table read of the 2009 revisionist World War II drama.
Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus, the only surviving member of a Jewish rural French family who were murdered by Christoph Waltz's Colonel Hans Landa. She extracts her revenge at the end of the movie.
"Melanie Laurent's table read was terrible. It wasn't good enough to be terrible," Tarantino says in Jay Glennie's new book, "The Making of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds".
"The most exciting day of preproduction is for me the table read. That is the closest I get to seeing the movie for the first time. Up until then, it's just been me reading all the scenes to myself or to a friend... so a table read with the whole cast is so exciting and so important to me. Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her," he recalled.
But Laurent was determined to reclaim her role. She personally reached out to Tarantino, explaining that she was not feeling well at the time and that she would travel to Germany to read for him again.
Tarantino agreed as long as she went through three days of rehearsals before making the final decision on whether the actor was the right choice to play Shosanna Dreyfus.
Laurent eventually convinced the filmmaker and reclaimed her role, for which she earned critical acclaim.
"Let me just go on the record for everybody to know: I love Mélanie," the filmmaker said, adding that he has erased the memory of the first table read from his mind because "Melanie is my Shosanna".
The "Pulp Fiction" director also recalled how Huppert, who was cast as Madame Ada Mimieux, did not make the cut in the film due to contractual issues.
Her role then went to "In the Mood for Love" star Maggie Cheung, although those scenes were eventually cut from the final film.
"She didn't show up, so....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 Cheung instead," Tarantino said.
"As far as I'm concerned, if you're cast and you are not at that table, I don't owe you jack shit! You can be fired, especially if I get excited by what somebody else did in your absence," he added.
"Inglourious Basterds" is an alternate-history war drama, which follows two parallel plots to assassinate the Third Reich's top leadership in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II.
The film featured Brad Pitt, Waltz, Michael Fassbender, and Diane Kruger alongside Laurent in key roles.
It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won Waltz the best actor award. He also won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as Landa.
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