Tarantino Fired Mélanie Laurent Over a Read-Through, Then Rehired Her
Quentin Tarantino fired Mélanie Laurent from Inglourious Basterds after a read-through he called terrible, then gave her the lead back, according to Variety.
A table read is a rehearsal where the cast reads the script aloud, usually sitting around a table, before filming starts. Tarantino said the reading Laurent gave was terrible, and that he fired her because of it.
Days later, Laurent called him. She told him she had not been feeling well. She offered to fly herself back to Germany and pay for a hotel so she could read for him again. Tarantino agreed to reconsider if she did three days of rehearsal with him. After those sessions, he returned the role of Shosanna Dreyfus to her. Shosanna is a French cinema owner who sets out to take revenge on the Nazi officer who killed her family.
The story also involves Isabelle Huppert. Tarantino said she was fired after she did not show up to the table read. He said there had been problems with her contract that kept stalling before the firing. Her part, Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who shelters Shosanna in Paris, was recast with Maggie Cheung.
Madame Ada Mimieux does not appear in the finished film. Variety reported that every scene featuring the character was cut, because Tarantino felt those scenes over-explained how Shosanna acquired the cinema.
The episode is part of the production history now covered in Jay Glennie's new book, The Making of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which looks at how the 2009 film was made.
The finished film had a long road to audiences. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, where Christoph Waltz won the best actor award. It opened in cinemas in August 2009 and grossed $321 million worldwide, according to the same Variety report.
For anyone who has ever wondered why a famous film looks the way it does, the casting changes are a reminder that the final cut is shaped by many decisions, some made late and some made in private. Laurent's offer to pay her own way, and the three days of rehearsal that followed, are the part of the story that ended with her on screen.
