One of the off-screen dramas surrounding The Fate of the Furious is the long-speculated feud between Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel. Neither has publicly admitted they don’t get along, but while promoting Fate, they’ve avoided each other during press tours. They’ve also thrown out lots of vague comments on Instagram over the last 12 months that suggest there’s real animosity between the two of them, letting fans read between the lines of their shade:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BI25NjMDPWv/
Culturally, this sort of passive-aggressive bitchiness is thought of as a female thing. Case in point: The FX series Feud, the first season of which is centered around the most famous on-set catfight of all-time — that between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford while making Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? And while such feuds are rampant among male band members (David Lee Roth v. Van Halen), rappers (Jay-Z v. Nas) and athletes (Kobe v. Shaq), they seem fewer and farther between when it comes to actors. We dug a little deeper to find a bunch of beefs between male co-stars, which might not be as notorious as Davis vs. Crawford, but are just as petty.
Tom Hardy vs. Shia LaBeouf
Back in 2012, Hardy co-starred with LaBeouf in the movie Lawless — the most interesting part of which was the fistfight the actors reportedly got into on set. “There was definitely a fight between them,” the film’s director John Hillcoat said during an AMA on Reddit. “It escalated to the point where they had to both be restrained. But I was very pleased to hear it didn’t go that way because I would hate to see the outcome.”
A few months later, while doing press for the movie Warrior, a very facetious Hardy said the outcome was all LaBeouf: “He knocked me out sparko. Out cold. He’s a bad, bad boy. He is. He’s quite intimidating as well. He’s a scary dude.”
“He just attacked me,” Hardy continued, eliciting laughter among the press junketeers. “He was drinking moonshine. I was wearing a cardigan, and er, went down. I woke up in [my trainer’s] arms. He was concerned for me. I was like, ‘What was that? It was lightning fast.’ And he said, ‘That was Shia.’ I said, ‘Fuckin’ hell. Can we go home now?’”
Alex Pettyfer vs. Channing Tatum
After Magic Mike wrapped, Pettyfer rented an apartment in New York owned by a friend of Tatum’s. But he left shortly after arriving, claiming that terrible mold and dust allergies made it difficult for him to breathe. He still, however, owed four months of back rent, which he forgot about after his cousin died suddenly.
“I all of a sudden got a very negative email from Channing, rightfully so, saying, ‘Don’t fuck my friends. You owe money. Pay the fucking money. Don’t be a clown,’” Pettyfer told Bret Easton Ellis on the author’s podcast.
He said he initially responded with something to the effect of, “I’m in a very negative headspace, can you respect me for a minute?” But after getting repeatedly “hounded” for the money, Pettyfer said he ultimately decided not to pay it.
“By the end of it, I just basically said, ‘Fuck them! I’m not dealing with this, and I’m not paying,’” Pettyfer explained to Ellis. “I should’ve just paid, though. I think he was looking for an excuse to not like me.”
If so, it worked. When Pettyfer returned for Magic Mike reshoots, the tide had turned against him. “[Tatum] had already told everyone he didn’t like me,” he told Ellis. “And what Channing says goes because he’s a movie star.”
Russell Crowe vs. Oliver Reed
When profiled by the British edition of GQ in 2010, Crowe happily shat all over the grave of his Gladiator co-star Reed, a notorious hell-raiser who died midway through filming the sword-and-sandals epic after a mammoth drinking session. “I never got on with Ollie. He has visited me in dreams and asked me to talk kindly of him. So I should… but we never had a pleasant conversation.”
“I have seen him walk down the street in Malta drunk as a lord and just hit anybody he got near to — even a man walking with his children,” Crowe continued. “I just found that to be… not impressive. He drank himself to death. He sat on a bar stool until he fell off it and carried on drinking… Lying in his own piss and vomit, he continued to drink till he passed out.
“In the end, he created such a weird energy around him that no one drinking with him cared.”
LL Cool J vs. Jamie Foxx
The Miami-Dade Police Department was required to settle one of the more seemingly minor on-set dustups — that also happened to take place on a movie, Any Given Sunday, that required fairly realistic blocking and tackling as well as the ham-handed intensity of late-career Oliver Stone.
The long and the short of it, according to Miami PD: For a scene, LL Cool J started pushing Foxx, his rival in the film, before going off-script and punching him in the face (while he was wearing his on-screen football helmet no less). The next time he did so, the rapper promised Foxx he would warn him first. As he walked away, though, Foxx told police LL Cool J’s arm struck him in the back of the head — after which Foxx punched him in the face.
They both suffered minor injuries; however, both refused treatment — as well as to press charges.
James Franco vs. Tyrese Gibson
“I hear he wants to blow up my hotel room,” Franco told GQ back in 2008.
The trouble began on the set of Annapolis a couple of years earlier. In the movie, Franco’s character struggles through his Naval training, a plight that climaxes with a boxing tournament that pits him against his commanding officer (played by Gibson).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOtzqt87e4
Leading up to that final fight sequence, Franco and Gibson were routinely sparring with each other, going through the movements that would eventually be staged in front of the camera. Franco’s method acting, however, didn’t leave much room for pseudo punches. “I was always like, ‘James, lighten up, man, Gibson told Elle magazine in 2007. “We’re just practicing.’ He never lightened up.”
“I respect method actors, but he never snapped out of character,” Gibson continued. “Whenever we’d have to get in the ring for boxing scenes, and even during practice, the dude was full-on hitting me.”
For his part, Franco owned up to GQ that he was a dick on Annapolis: “I take full blame for any problems on that film. If he had a bad experience working with me, I was probably a jerk. I was not purposely cruel to him, but I was probably so wrapped up in my performance that I was not as friendly as I could have been. This is such a stupid issue I can’t believe I’m still talking about it. But when I’m asked about it in the press it makes it seem as if it’s still an issue. I think Tyrese is a sweet guy with a good heart. I wish him all the best.”
Gibson, however, still isn’t chill about Franco’s Roberto Duran impersonation. “I never want to work with him again, and I’m sure he feels the same way,” he told Playboy in 2007. “It felt very personal. It was fucked up.”
So much for an Annapolis franchise.
Andrew Fiouzi
Andrew Fiouzi is a staff writer at MEL.
