By Last month came the news that Joaquin Phoenix had abruptly exited Todd Haynes’ untitled 1930s detective noir/romance film just days before it was to start shooting.
Now comes word that he did something similar nearly a decade ago. Out promoting his role in “See No Evil” opening this weekend, actor James McAvoy unexpectedly revealed that one of his most famous roles of the past decade almost went to Phoenix.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, McAvoy confirmed Phoenix left M. Night Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller “Split” just two weeks before filming was to begin.
As a result, McAvoy was brought in right away to take on the role of the film’s villain – a character that had fifteen different personalities. He explains:
“He’s an amazing actor. I think he’d give a very different performance to the one I did, but I think he’d give an incredible performance. Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way. I think he ditched it two weeks before they started shooting. It was really last minute. I had two weeks [to prepare].
The script was well put together so a lot of it was pretty clear what I wanted to do straight away. There were a couple of characters that took a little bit longer to find. [Characters] Patricia came real quick, Dennis came real quick. Hedwig took a little while. It wasn’t until the read-through for the table read which I was really nervous for.
I’m sitting there like, ‘God, I’ve got to do all these 15 characters and be judged by everybody in the room, including Universal studio executives including Jason Blum, and I haven’t even found some of the characters. It just came on really quick.”
The comments follow on from a reveal by director Ridley Scott that Phoenix was nervous two weeks before “Napoleon” was to begin filming and so Scott spent over a week with him going through the role scene-by-scene.
Phoenix was asked at the Venice Film Festival the other week about exiting the Haynes project, to which he responded he wouldn’t share his perspective without the other creatives on the project there to discuss theirs as it wouldn’t be fair.
The post Phoenix Abruptly Left Shyamalan’s “Split” appeared first on Dark Horizons.
