Quentin Tarantino Inglourious Basterds casting decisions, Digi Mart USA News: Quentin Tarantino has revealed that he fired an actor from his 2009 film Inglourious Basterds and nearly dropped another. The film follows a group of Jewish soldiers on an undercover mission to bring down Hitler and the Nazi government, and stars Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent and Eli Roth.
According to the new book The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds by Jay Glennie, Laurent, who played French cinema owner Shosanna Dreyfus, almost lost her role, and French actor Isabelle Huppert was fired entirely. The book is a deep exploration of Tarantino’s war epic and reveals several behind-the-scenes castings that never happened.
Tarantino, who is interviewed for the book, said Huppert was cast as Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who provides shelter to Shosanna in Paris, but lost out on the role because she missed the table read. “She didn’t show up, so f*** it.
I fired her,” he said, according to an excerpt published by People. He added that there were issues with her contract, which kept stalling, and said the role went to Maggie Cheung instead.
Tarantino said that missed table reads are a common issue and that he does not feel obligated to actors who are cast but do not attend. Cheung’s role ultimately went to the character, but the sequence showing how Shosanna acquired the cinema was eventually cut from the movie.
“All we needed was a title card saying ‘Four Years Later’ and Shosanna explaining that she inherited it from her aunt,” Tarantino said.
The director also revealed that he briefly considered dropping Laurent as Shosanna because her table read was “terrible.” He described the table read as the most exciting day of preproduction for him, the closest he gets to seeing the movie for the first time. According to Tarantino, Laurent called him, asked for the role back, and explained that she was not feeling well during the table read.
She insisted she would show up to set regardless of his decision.
Tarantino said he was eventually convinced by Laurent to reconsider, and they returned to square one. He said he was ultimately happy with the decision, and Laurent went on to win acclaim for her role.
“Let me just go on the record for everybody to know: I love Mélanie,” he said, adding that Laurent is his Shosanna.
