10 Behind-The-Scenes Feuds That Changed Entire Movies And TV Shows

Artistic types can be ... temperamental, and when you gather a group of relative strangers to make a movie or a TV show, one of two things can happen. Either the cast will become a great group of friends and love coming to work every day, or the opposite can happen, meaning that actors and directors can end up butting heads to the point where the entire project basically gets derailed.

In this list, we're talking about that second possibility and chatting about on-set feuds between actors and actors — and actors and directors, which introduces a pretty tricky power imbalance into the mix — that either ran projects directly into the ground or, ultimately, made them a little better after a problematic person left the project behind. From two leading ladies feuding on a hit HBO comedy to a network show plagued by a difficult comedian to an alleged on-set feud that led to one of the wildest press tours in recent Hollywood history, here are 10 on-set feuds that changed movies and TV shows entirely.

The feud between Kim Cattrall and Sarah Jessica Parker has become the stuff of Hollywood legend over the years, and the craziest part is that nobody really knows how it even started. Of course, Cattrall and Parker spent six seasons starring on HBO's groundbreaking comedy "Sex and the City" as sex-positive PR maven Samantha Jones and quirky sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw — alongside Cynthia Nixon as buttoned-up lawyer Miranda Hobbes and Kristin Davis as the traditional romantic Charlotte York-Goldenblatt — and went on to do two movies in the franchise, "Sex and the City" in 2008 and "Sex and the City 2" in 2010. (The original series began its run in 1998 and ended in 2004.)

As that aforementioned legend has it, Cattrall is the one who declined a third "Sex and the City" movie, which is why one never materialized despite the overwhelming financial success of the first two entries ... but then, when HBO Max launched the "Sex and the City" reboot series "And Just Like That," Cattrall simply refused to participate. During the Season 2 finale, Cattrall filmed a cameo completely separate from Parker — in a scene where Samantha and Carrie "talk" on the phone — but has repeatedly said that her beef with Parker is why she won't play Samantha Jones in any sort of larger capacity ever again. Parker has, according to a Vulture timeline of the feud, denied the existence of a feud at all, while Cattrall maintains that Parker wasn't nice during their time working together. We might never know what truly happened here, but at the end of the day, nobody wants to watch a "Sex and the City" project without Samantha, which might be why "And Just Like That" abruptly ended after its third season.

In 2015, director Sam Taylor-Johnson was given the daunting task of adapting E.L. James' bestselling novel "Fifty Shades of Grey" for the big screen, and as it turns out, on-set strife between James and Taylor-Johnson proved nearly impossible during filming. So how did this "problem" get fixed? Well, because it's James's novel, she took control ... and after "Fifty Shades of Grey," starring Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as lovers Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, was a massive financial success, Taylor-Johnson was axed as director and succeeded by James Foley for the sequels "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed."

In The Hollywood Reporter in April 2024, Taylor-Johnson was quite blunt. ""This was her book and she had a very particular vision of how she wanted to see this film. And I had a diametrically opposed vision," she shared. "Where we got to is where we got to. The success of it was great, but the experience of it was tough." Not only that, but Taylor-Johnson said she experienced a legitimate crisis of confidence afterwards. "It took me about four years to regain my confidence and composure," the director admitted. "I'm going back to being an artist where I can make all my own decisions, answer to myself and present the world with something that I've created." As for the "Fifty Shades" franchise, the two sequel films received worse reviews than the original (only slightly, but still) after Taylor-Johnson left and are, at this point, just a punchline; perhaps if Taylor-Johnson had been given more creative freedom by James, this would have all unfolded differently, and we might have gotten better films. 

The 2000 big-screen adaptation of "Charlie's Angels" is a whole lot of fun to watch, but one of its stars — Lucy Liu, one of the titular Angels alongside Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz — didn't have a particularly good time making the movie. Rumors swirled about Liu being the target of vicious attacks by her co-star Bill Murray — who plays Bosley, the middleman who connects the Angels to Charlie — for years, and in 2021, Liu appeared on the Los Angeles times podcast "Asian Enough" (via Deadline) and discussed it directly.

Liu said that after a scene was reworked while Murray was unavailable due to a family commitment, he came back angry about the situation and began insulting Liu. She didn't share precisely what he said, but here's what she did share. "I was, like, 'Wow, he seems like he's looking straight at me.' I couldn't believe that [his comments] could be towards me, because what do I have to do with anything majorly important at that time?" Liu recalled, feeling like Murray was holding her responsible for rewrites he didn't like. "I say, 'I'm so sorry. Are you talking to me?'—and clearly he was, because then it started to become a one-on-one communication." Liu also called Murray's comments "inexcusable and unacceptable," but clarified that she stood her ground.

"I stood up for myself, and I don't regret it," Liu said. "Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there's no need to condescend or to put other people down." Murray has routinely denied any wrongdoing, but the fact of the matter is that whatever went down got him booted from the sequel ... and Bernie Mac took on the role of Bosley for "Charlie's Angels : Full Throttle" in 2003.

Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze's iconic dance romance "Dirty Dancing" is one of the most beloved movies of the 1980s, and it's no secret, at this point, that Swayze and Grey weren't on great terms making this film after previously butting heads on "Red Dawn" three years prior. In 2025, the movie's choreographer Kenny Ortega referenced a scene between the two actors where Swayze, who passed away in 2009, can't hide his frustration with Grey's antics ... specifically, a scene where Swayze's character, dancer Johnny Castle, is trying to teach Frances "Baby" Houseman (Grey) how to move her arm delicately for a particular dance move ahead of their competition.

"This moment where he's tickling her, she's literally losing herself," Ortega told Entertainment Tonight in a career retrospective. "We're in a tin building. It's freezing cold. It's 4 o'clock in the morning. Patrick is so tired and wanting to go home. And every time he does this, she's giggling, and the look on his face. No one directed that."

As for Grey, she spoke to Woman's Day in 2020 and praised director Emile Ardolino for accurately depicting how she and Swayze were while filming. "When you see him tickling me, and you see how frustrated he was when he looks at me because I cannot stop laughing because I'm ticklish — and then as soon as someone tells you not to laugh it makes you almost anxious and you can't stop laughing — there's something about that realness of that moment being caught," she recalled."

Ultimately, this is a rare feud that doesn't ruin the movie. On the contrary, Johnny's obvious irritation with Baby makes the movie strangely better because it's so true to his character; that's probably not what Swayze intended, but it's honestly sort of great.

Between "Saturday Night Live" and the NBC sitcom "Community," it's no secret that comedian Chevy Chase has been accused of inappropriate on-set behavior for years. When it comes to "Community," the story seems a little more straightforward in that, in 2018, showrunner and creator Dan Harmon told The New Yorker that Chase, who played elderly community college attendee Pierce Hawthorne, used a racial slur while speaking to his co-star Donald Glover, who portrayed jock Troy Barnes, resulting in Chase getting fired from the show (at which point Pierce was killed off).

"Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off," Harmon said of the incident. "I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy's non-P.C. verbiage, and Donald said, 'I don't even worry about it.'"

Chase, for his part, has a totally different explanation during an episode of "WTF with Marc Maron" (via Vanity Fair). "I honestly felt the show wasn't funny enough for me, ultimately. I felt a little bit constrained," Chase told Maron. "Everybody had their bits, and I thought they were all good. It just wasn't hard-hitting enough for me." That's when Joel McHale, who played disbarred lawyer Jeff Winger on the series, chimed in. "Hey, no one was keeping you there. I mean, we weren't sentenced to that show," McHale told People Magazine, responding directly to Chase. "It was like, 'All right, you could have left if you really wanted that.' But yeah, you know Chevy. That's Chevy being Chevy." McHale also quipped, in response to Chase's comments, 'Hey, the feeling's mutual, bud.'" With that in mind, it's really hard to watch Chase's scenes on "Community" now.

What's particularly funny about the alleged issues on the set of the third "Blade" movie, "Blade: Trinity," is that the person to break the news was comedian Patton Oswalt, who told The AV Club in 2012 that star Wesley Snipes, who played the titular vampire hunter, was basically a menace on-set. 

"It was just one of those; it was a very troubled production. Wesley [Snipes] was just f***ing crazy in a hilarious way," Oswalt shared, saying that Snipes often refused to come out of his trailer, did drugs all day, and had a strange fit on one of the days he did deign to go to set. "Then I remember one day on the set—they let everyone pick their own clothes—there was one black actor who was also kind of a club kid. And he wore this shirt with the word "Garbage" on it in big stylish letters. It was his shirt," Oswalt recalled before continuing:

"And Wesley came down to the set, which he only did for close-ups. Everything else was done by his stand-in. I only did one scene with him. But he comes on and goes, "There's only one other black guy in the movie, and you make him wear a shirt that says 'Garbage?' You racist motherf***er!"

This was, presumably, directed at the film's director David S. Goyer, the subject of Snipes' frequent wrath. Goyer told Uproxx that making the film was the "most personally and professionally difficult and painful thing" he's ever experienced and that he and Snipes never spoke again. This all makes "Blade: Trinity" tough to watch ... but also, "Blade: Trinity" is just a bad movie, which also makes it hard to watch. 

In 2017, NBC revived their popular sitcom "Will & Grace" and brought back the four original cast members: Megan Mullally as Karen Walker, Debra Messing as Grace Adler, Eric McCormick as Will Truman, and Sean Hayes as Jack McFarland. Unfortunately, after the original series ended in 2006, things weren't exactly copacetic between Messing and Mullally, and in a 2020 interview with the reboot's showrunners David Kohan and Max Mutchnick with Entertainment Weekly, the duo admitted that Mullally and Messing's feud really got in the way of filming.

The same outlet previously reported that Mullally "stepped away" from a few episodes due to rumors of turmoil between her and Messing, and Mutchnick all but confirmed that in this interview. "We always work under this kind of motto that everything's about the work. It's just about the work. And so if we stay true to that, then we just keep you guys out of whatever happened on the set this year because it would have done nothing but get in the way of the stories that we wanted to tell," Mutchnick said before mentioning a problem. "It was not an easy year, but the permanent legacy of the show is much more important to us than any temporary squabble that would take place on the stage," he admitted. Ultimately, the "Will & Grace" reboot only ran for three years and seasons, and it might have gone longer — and featured more of the brilliant Mullally — had there not been an issue.

The press tour for director and actor Olivia Wilde's second feature film "Don't Worry Darling" ballooned so spectacularly out of control that the entire movie ended up overshadowed by it, so what exactly did happen here? Nobody will ever truly know, but the gist seems to be that there was a feud between the movie's star Florence Pugh, who plays submissive housewife Alice Chambers, and Wilde herself. 

As the film prepared to open, a source told Us Weekly that Pugh likely wouldn't be doing much press for the film, saying, "Florence and Olivia have had several disagreements personally and professionally, that's why Florence isn't doing any press for the movie." There were also ultimately unsubstantiated rumors, around this time, that Pugh basically stepped in to direct scenes for "Don't Worry Darling" while Wilde was off with Pugh's co-star Harry Styles, with whom Wilde was romantically linked at the time. Add in an absolutely disastrous leaked recording of Wilde talking to Shia LaBeouf, who was originally supposed to play the role of Jack (which went to Styles after LaBeouf left the project), persuading him to try and make it work despite an apparent issue Pugh had with LaBeouf ... and you've got a big old mess. To make everything worse, "Don't Worry Darling" received poor reviews from critics, and now, it's just known as the movie with a crazy press tour and on-set drama. 

What the heck happened between Julianna Marguiles and Archie Panjabi on the set of "The Good Wife?" As the show prepared for Panjabi's exit, rumors swirled about on-set drama between Marguiles, who played the titular scorned "good wife" Alicia Florrick, and "Bend it Like Beckham" veteran Panjabi, who portrayed investigator Kalinda Sharma for the show's first six seasons. Things apparently got so bad that, during a final scene between on-screen best friends Alicia and Kalinda where they meet at a bar before parting ways forever, it sure seems like showrunners Robert and Michelle King were forced to film using a split-screen, meaning that Marguiles and Panjabi didn't appear to be on the same set at the same time.

In an oral history in TVLine, former CBS boss Nina Tassler praised the way this, uh, "situation" was handled. "I'm not going to reveal movie magic," the network boss hedged. "The ending of the show was a very satisfying ending for the relationship between those two characters. I stand by how Robert and Michelle King produce their show." Marguiles and Panjabi have also dodged questions about this for years, claiming that scheduling conflicts forced them to film separately, but the entire thing feels like a huge mystery ... and is a strange low for such a popular and beloved series. Plus, it makes it uncomfortable to see all of the scenes that Marguiles and Panjabi really did share.

"The Notebook" is one of the most romantic movies ever made, but Nick Cassavetes once revealed that its stars did not get along at first, which is doubly ironic when you consider that Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, those aforementioned stars, started dating after meeting on the set. Speaking to VH1 in 2014, Cassavetes said that there was one day where things between the two future lovers, who play star-crossed lovers Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, got so bad that Gosling asked for McAdams to be replaced.

"Ryan came to me, and there's 150 people standing in this big scene, and he says, 'Nick come here.' He's doing a scene with Rachel and he says, 'Would you take her out of here and bring in another actress to read off-camera with me?'" Cassavetes said then. "'I said, 'What?' He says, 'I can't. I can't do it with her. I'm just not getting anything from this.'"

Then, ten years later, Cassavetes said he regretted sharing this story ... but that's not because it wasn't true. He just felt bad about gossiping. "The last time I did an interview on this thing, I spilled the beans on that. I regretted it," Cassavetes told Entertainment Weekly in a feature celebrating the film's 20th anniversary. "Everyone's like, why are you telling that? I'm like, I don't know. It caught me on a bad day, but if [McAdams and Gosling] are around, I apologize to you guys. I shouldn't have spilled the beans." Honestly, Allie and Noah are supposed to hate each other early in the movie, and their shared passion led to some insane on-screen chemistry and made the film better ... and a real relationship to boot.