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Alec Baldwin and Shia LaBeouf kind seem a little more alike these days with the fights with the media, but back in 2013 the two men had a huge rift while rehearsing for the Broadway play, Orphans leading Shia LaBeouf to punch and wall and then be fired! Baldwin tells New York Magazine that there was tension with LaBeouf from the very beginning adding that LaBeouf said he was slowing him down since Baldwin had not learned his lines in advance and later attacked him in front of everyone. Baldwin offered to quit the play.
“There was friction between us from the beginning. LaBeouf seems to carry with him, to put it mildly, a jailhouse mentality wherever he goes. When he came to rehearsal, he was told it was important to memorize his lines. He took that to heart and learned all his lines in advance, even emailing me videos in which he read aloud his lines from the entire play. To prove he had put in the time. (What else do you do in jail?) I, however, do not learn my lines in advance. So he began to sulk because he felt we were slowing him down. You could tell right away he loves to argue. And one day he attacked me in front of everyone. He said, “You’re slowing me down, and you don’t know your lines. And if you don’t say your lines, I’m just going to keep saying my lines.
We all sat, frozen. I snorted a bit, and, turning to him in front of the whole cast, I asked, “If I don’t say my words fast enough, you’re going to just say your next line?” I said. ‘You realize the lines are written in a certain order?’ He just glared at me.
So I asked the company to break. And I took the stage manager, with Sullivan, to another room, and I said one of us is going to go. I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll go.’ I said don’t fire the kid, I’ll quit. They said no, no, no, no, and they fired him. And I think he was shocked. He had that card, that card you get when you make films that make a lot of money that gives you a certain kind of entitlement. I think he was surprised that it didn’t work in the theater.
But firing LaBeouf didn’t help things. Sullivan played both sides. In emails, he coddled Shia. To me, he spoke differently. I was working with an older, more enervated Sullivan, who didn’t have the energy for any of this. I don’t think Sullivan liked the play—I don’t think he liked me. Sullivan agreed to do something that, once he realized what it was, he had lost interest in it. We closed early. I’ll forever be indebted to Ben Foster for stepping in for Shia. He is one of the good guys.”
Baldwin also plans to quit public life…sounds like Shia…
Photo from PR Photos
