The Real Reason These Actors Stormed Off Set

Lea Michele was not always on the best of terms with her "Glee" co-stars, but one specific incident with the late Naya Rivera led her to storm off the set of the hit series. 

On April 17, 2014, TMZ reported what sources close to Rivera told them: Michele's "diva antics" had annoyed most of the cast and crew on the prior Tuesday, specifically when she made everyone wait to shoot a scene while she dealt with "personal matters." Rivera finally went to the producers and warned them that Michele was "pissing off people" — and when Michele learned about that, she left the set. Sources close to Michele contradicted the story, telling TMZ the actress was unaware of any complaints about her and wasn't even shooting scenes with Rivera. Additional rumors Claimed that Rivera was the one who "got tossed off the set." 

In 2016, Rivera published a book entitled "Sorry Not Sorry" in which she admitted that she and Michele did not get along. "Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery," she wrote. "We are both strong willed and competitive — not just with each other but with everyone — and that's not a good mixture." Despite their feuding, when Rivera drowned in 2020, Michele posted a black and white photo of her in apparent tribute to her former co-star.

The fight in "Rocky IV" between Carl Weathers' Apollo Creed and Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago was brutal, but what happened behind the scenes was apparently no different. According to Rocky series star Sylvester Stallone, Weathers and Lundgren did not get along on set. When the two were in the ring, Lundgren had been too aggressive with Weathers, causing the "Action Jackson" star to storm off set yelling profanities at the 6'5" Swedish tough guy. After four days of no production, Stallone finally convinced Weathers to return, after Lundgren agreed to not be as hostile.

In 2020, Yahoo! Entertainment spoke with Lundgren about his on-set fracas with Weathers. "I like Carl. But I'd worked out with Sly for five months before the picture. So I knew him pretty well," said Lundgren. "And I was a fighter, a karate champion from Europe and I think when Carl showed up, he was like, 'I'm gonna have to fight this guy? He seems like he's the real thing.' I didn't dislike anybody on that set but I think he got a little scared of me. Then I had to kill him, of course." We're pretty sure Lundgren is referring to what his character had to do in the movie — but in retrospect, maybe Weathers was smart to get out of there.

1971's "The French Connection" is considered one of the greatest movies ever made, but on-set difficulties between actor and former Marine Gene Hackman and legendarily two-fisted director William Friedkin almost kept the film coming to fruition. Speaking with future "Mission: Impossible" director Christopher McQuarrie in 2016, Friedkin explained that Hackman grew up disliking authority and as the authority figure on set, Friedkin needed to make Hackman angry. 

"Instead of saying 'cut,' I would say, 'Oh, Jesus Christ. Are you kidding me?' I would say, 'Pal, you better get a day job. Y'know, you better look for something else 'cause this isn't working out,'" said Friedkin. "And he actually quit the film on the second day, and his agent, Sue Mengers, said, 'Well, that's fine, Gene. If you do that, you'll own the picture. Y'know, you will own everything they've spent,' so Gene stuck around and stuck it out." 

As it turns out, Hackman would've missed an Oscar for Best Lead Actor if he had dropped out of the movie. So returning to set seems like it was a pretty good career move.

Ridley Scott's critically acclaimed historical drama "Gladiator," which first hit theaters in the year 2000, went on to receive several Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Lead Actor for Russell Crowe, but the film's star didn't make that journey any easier. 

Time magazine published an article about "Gladiator" when the film was initially released, stating that Crowe had doubts about the movie's evolving script and stormed off the set when he did not receive answers. "Russell was not well behaved," a Dreamworks executive told the magazine. "He tried to rewrite the entire script on the spot. You know the big line in the trailer, 'In this life or the next, I will have my vengeance'? At first he absolutely refused to say it. He did a lot of posturing and put the fear of God into some people. Thankfully, Ridley never yelled. He was the voice of reason dealing with many unreasonable factors, not the least of which was his lead."

"Gladiator" producer Douglas Wick told CinemaBlend twenty years later that the reports of Crowe's heavy involvement in the script were "greatly exaggerated" and that "Russell constantly had a strong point of view of what Maximus would do and not do, but there wasn't much improvisation." Even if these allegations aren't true, they continue the old narrative that Crowe has been difficult to work with.

Comedy legend Chevy Chase played outlandish millionaire Pierce Hawthorne in the cult sitcom "Community," but he did not always have the best time on set. According to a Deadline expose published March 31, 2012, Chase walked off the set of the show on the last day of shooting without filming one of his scenes, which had been intended to close out the Season 3 finale. This incident led to a bitter feud between Chase and series creator Dan Harmon.

The following August, Harmon shed some light on why Chase stormed off set in one of Reddit's "Ask Me Anything" sessions (via The A.V. Club). Writer-producer Adam Countee pitched a "tag" for the Season 3 finale, which would reportedly serve as an emotional ending for the season. Chase, however, refused to shoot the scene because he didn't think it was funny. 

When the actor had walked off set in the past, the crew would pick up his shots later in the week, but since they were filming the season finale, the sets came down after Chase went home. The scene was never shot, and Harmon was not happy about it. Chase left the show in November of that year but would return for a cameo in Season 5.

Joaquin Phoenix has earned a reputation for intensely committed performances in films like "Beau Is Afraid," "Walk the Line," and "The Master." And it appears that his ability to immerse himself in the often complicated psychological terrain of his characters can, on occasion, be too much to bear. Case in point, his Oscar-winning turn in "Joker," which spurred Phoenix to walk off-set in the middle of several scenes.

In a profile of Phoenix for The New York Times, "Joker" director Todd Phillips explained that the actor often startled his co-stars with his abrupt exits. "The poor other actor thinks it's them, and it was never them — it was always him, and he just wasn't feeling it," said Phillips. But as the filmmaker noted, Phoenix always used his exits to regain his focus, recalling that the actor told him, "We'll take a walk and we'll come back and do it."

His "Joker" co-star Robert De Niro – no stranger to intense performances himself — understood Phoenix's need to exit. "Joaquin was very intense in what he was doing, as it should be, as he should be," he said. "There's nothing to talk about, personally, on the side, 'Let's have coffee.' Let's just do the stuff."

Actor Alec Baldwin was the primary focus of the media attention that swirled around the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during filming on the Western "Rust." But another name was frequently featured in coverage: Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was the film's armorer and in charge of overseeing the prop weapons, including the gun that killed Hutchins. According to The Wrap, Gutierrez-Reed ran into trouble as an armorer on another Western, "The Old Way," where her apparent inexperience reportedly angered star Nicolas Cage enough for him to walk off the set.

The Wrap feature quoted Stu Brumbaugh, a key grip on "The Old Way," who said that Gutierrez-Reed was so inexperienced at her job that she fired live ammunition from weapons near cast and crew on two occasions during the shoot. This reportedly angered Cage, who, according to Brumbaugh, yelled, "Make an announcement, you just blew my f***ing eardrums out!" before storming off the set. Brumbaugh said that he recommended her dismissal to the assistant director, noting, "We were moving too fast. She's a rookie."

However, a producer of "The Old Way" told The Wrap that they had no recollection of such an event during filming. "The details on some of these accounts specifically when it pertains to 'The Old Way' have been blown out of proportion," they said.

Among the many celebrities who faced the apocalypse in the 2013 comedy "This Is the End" is "Harry Potter" star Emma Watson, who in one scene faces off against a cannibalistic Danny McBride leading Channing Tatum on a leash. Rumors have swirled for years that Watson walked off the set because of the scene's content. In an interview with British GQ, Seth Rogen — who co-directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in "This is the End" — attempted to set the record straight.

"I think sometimes when you read something, when it comes to life it doesn't seem to be what you thought it was," Rogen said. "But it was not some terrible ending to our relationship." Rogen added that Watson not only came back the next day but also helped to promote the film. "She was probably right," he concluded about her decision to leave the set during the shoot.

Rogen later doubled down on the Watson issue on his X (formerly Twitter) account, where he wrote that the story didn't paint an accurate depiction of the event. Most notably, Watson did not "storm off the set," as was frequently reported. "The scene was not what was originally scripted, it was getting improvised, changed drastically, and was not what she agreed to." Rogen went on to effusively compliment Watson and concluded by writing, "I am very sorry and disappointed it happened, and I wish I had done more to prevent it."

Now that the '80s cult comedy "ALF" is being revived via Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort Channel and Shout! Studios, it's perhaps time to review the fact that the original series was no picnic for the cast and crew. The series, which ran on NBC from 1986 to 1990, featured a cast of actors interacting with the title creature, an eccentric alien portrayed by a puppet operated by series co-creator Paul Fusco. To accommodate the 4-foot-3-inch puppet, the soundstage was built off the ground and riddled with holes through which Fusco manipulated the puppet. The arrangement required long hours, which were exacerbated by the fact that ALF was the star of the series and the humans were his second bananas. "It was hard work and very grim," said actor Max Wright, who played family head Willie Tanner.

Actress Anne Schedeen, who played Willie's wife, Kate, told People magazine that Wright's frustrations with the series came to a head during the filming of its final episode. "There was one take, and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared," she explained. "Nobody had to say 'Wrap,' and there were no goodbyes." Wright had a change of heart about his co-star before his death in 2019. "It doesn't matter what I felt or what the days were like," he said. "'ALF' brought people a lot of joy."

The 1967 James Bond spoof "Casino Royale" was already a convoluted project, featuring a vast international cast led by Ursula Andress, Woody Allen, David Niven, and Orson Welles and five directors, including John Huston, before Peter Sellers complicated matters almost beyond repair. The notoriously mercurial comic actor, who was cast as a baccarat champ hired by James Bond (Niven) to impersonate him during a game against Welles' SMERSH agent, was plagued by mood swings and insecurities throughout the shoot: He fought, both verbally and physically, with longtime friend and collaborator Joe McGrath, who directed his scenes, and refused to appear in scenes opposite Welles, which required them to be shot at separate times.

Eventually, Sellers walked off the film altogether, which forced producer Charles Feldman to scramble in order to save the picture from collapse. The solution was to rewrite the script so that half of the cast, including Andress, Barbara Bouchet's Miss Moneypenny, and Australian actor Terence Cooper, was also impersonating Bond. The ruse didn't clarify the script or win over critics, who were unkind to the film, but audiences were apparently delighted with the hijinks and made it one of the most profitable films of 1967.

The Walt Disney Company's bitter war of words with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spurred a walk-out by employees of the media giant in 2022 to protest a controversial state education bill. Actress Raven-Symoné, a member of the LBTQ+ community and star of the Disney Channel series "Raven's Home," and her co-stars participated in the protest, walking off the series' set to decry House Bill 1557, the notorious "Don't Say Gay" bill, which prohibits discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms "that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students."

The actress posted a video with her castmates on her Instagram account that solidified her stance on the bill. "In today's world it is imperative that we take stands, show support and move forward not backwards," she wrote. "Every family every person and every child deserves to be recognized no matter their race, gender, or sexual orientation." Employees from many Disney companies, including Marvel Studios, LucasFilm, and 20th Century Fox, also participated in the protest.

Before she became an in-demand comic actress in films like "Young Frankenstein" and "Tootsie," Teri Garr was a hard-working dancer and actress looking for her first big break in Hollywood. One appeared to present itself in the form of "Assignment: Earth," a Season 2 episode of "Star Trek: The Original Series," which was intended as a backdoor pilot for a proposed series that never came to pass. Garr described her role in her episode in her 2005 autobiography, "Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood," as a "dippy secretary in a pink and orange costume and a very short skirt." That skirt did more than define Garr's character in the episode: It also contributed to a dustup on the set that left the actress with a lasting distaste for science fiction.

According to "The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Times of Gene Roddenberry," author Lance Parkin noted that the "Star Trek" creator was adamant that Garr's short skirt get even shorter for the episode. Garr herself was so appalled by the idea that she reportedly walked off the set before returning to finish the episode. The experience appeared to still carry some resonance for Garr decades later; in a 1990 interview for Starlog magazine (via StarTrek.com), she refused to talk about the series, and described "Star Trek" fans as "the same people who go to swap meets."

Adam Sandler's critically reviled comedy "The Ridiculous 6" found itself at the center of controversy when reports surfaced that several Native American actors walked off the set of the Netflix production in 2015 to protest what they perceived as racially insensitive jokes and disrespectful treatment by the film's producers. The Indian Country Today Media Network reported (via Variety) that a dozen actors walked out after speaking to unnamed producers. "They just treated us as if we should just be on the side," said Loren Anthony, one of the actors who walked. Film student Allison Young, who also left the set, said that producers labeled them as over-sensitive. "We talked to the producers about our concerns," she said. "They just told us, 'If you guys are so sensitive, you should leave.'"

However, the New York Daily News quoted Native American actor Ricky Lee, who said that only four actors left the set but many others remained. "Believe me, if everyone was really offended, there would be a much bigger uproar," said Lee. He also noted that Sandler spoke to several Native American actors about the walkouts before the film's wrap party. "The last thing that he said before he got up was that the thing that made him feel the worst is that four people got their feelings hurt," said Lee.