Director Thomas Bidegain is coming to Jake Gyllenhaal‘s rescue and setting the record straight about what happened on the set of their movie.
Earlier this week, Gyllenhaal made headlines after a French magazine made claims that the “Southpaw” displayed erratic behavior on the set of the anticipated movie “Suddenly,” resulting in an end in the project.
French Director Clears The Air About Jake Gyllenhaal
Bidegain recently cleared the air about why Gyllenhaal and Vanessa Kirby exited his project “Suddenly” after a previous interview with a French magazine reported that the BAFTA winner exhibited problematic behaviors, resulting in a loss of $26 million.
According to the French Director, he parted ways with Kirby and Gyllenhaal strictly because of differences in creative decisions and nothing to do with the actor’s alleged vile actions.
The magazine Technikart alleged in a column titled “Four Days to Bury a Movie” that the 43-year-old “stripped down to his underwear and jumped in the freezing cold sea in front of the whole crew.”
In another instance, Gyllenhaal reportedly specified that the color of his hire car should neither be red nor white and mockingly read the script aloud in mock French accents like “Pepe Le Pew.”
While Bidegain didn’t directly deny nor confirm the allegations, he told Variety Magazine, “People don’t understand how a film is made. We were not shooting, and we were not in pre-production. The tentative date of the shoot was eight weeks away. This project came together during the pandemic, so we had only discussed via Zoom. We would talk every week, but we had not met to talk about the film.”
He continued, “So I came up with the idea of setting up that week in Iceland to read the script together, with Jake and Vanessa. I thought it would be good to meet there since it was where we were thinking of shooting the movie, and it’s a beautiful place.”
The filmmaker noted that as the project progressed Gyllenhaal became a producer as he was looking forward to having more creative input in the Indie movie. “I did a lot of Zooms with Jake and Vanessa, so I thought the three of us were on the same page. So when we met in Iceland, I assumed that we would just put the finishing touches on it,” Bidegain said of his expectation.
However, the reverse was the case when they met in person. “But when we started reading the script in the same room, we realized that we didn’t have at all the same vision of what the film was meant to be,” Bidegain confessed. “They wanted more and more changes. I tried to smooth things over once, twice — and then I just realized it wasn’t going to work out, so it had to stop.”
There were also disagreements on what the major theme of the movie should be. In addition, Bidegain revealed that after the disagreements, Kirby approached him and asked if she could buy the script, but she turned him down.
Fans Believe Jake Gyllenhaal Purposely Terminated The Project
Following the reports of Gyllenhaal’s rumored behavior, fans took to Twitter to defend him, claiming he only acted that way because he wanted to be done with the project.
“Tell me you’re trying to get fired without telling me you’re trying to get fired…,” wrote one fan while penned, “Sounds like he was purposefully trying to get fired to get out of the project,” sharing the same sentiment.
An indie movie ‘SUDDENLY’ fell apart after Jake Gyllenhaal showed erratic behavior, including:
• Stripping to his underwear & diving into the freezing ocean, saying “when I see the sea, I swim in the sea”• Constant script rewrite demands• Doing his rehearsal in a Pepe Le… pic.twitter.com/8DiOwC55kQ
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 31, 2024
A similar comment read, “Sounds like he just wanted to get out of the movie. But I would watch a movie with Jake doing a Pepe Le Pew accent the whole time.” Another humorous comment read, “Sounds like an Oscar-worthy performance.”
