Jonah Hill has opened up about working with David O Russell on the film I Heart Huckabees, describing the controversial Oscar-nominated director as “f***ing nuts at the time”.
The Superbad star made his film debut in Russell’s 2004 film, which is arguably best remembered for an explosive argument between the director and actor Lily Tomlin. Footage of the altercation was leaked three years after the film’s release.
Hill, 42, gave a rare interview at a live recording of the Smartless podcast on Saturday (25 April), in which he opened up about his experience on the set of Huckabees.
“David O was f***ing nuts at the time,” Hill said (via The Hollywood Reporter). Clarifying that he thought the filmmaker was “awesome” and “one of the best directors ever”, Hill continued: “He was buck wild and I’m homies with him… Super nice guy.
“But in that moment in life – and I’ve had my own, trust me – he was buck wild, dude. He was screaming at Lily Tomlin. It’s online and s***. And he’ll talk about it.”
Hill then claimed that on his first day on set, he saw the Silver Linings Playbook director fighting with a member of his creative team. “Everyone’s screaming at each other,” he said.
The Independent has contacted Russell’s representatives for comment.
Russell’s reputation within Hollywood for locking horns with stars is well known. Over the years, he is alleged to have headbutted George Clooney – who starred in Russell’s 1999 film Three Kings – while Amy Adams claimed that the filmmaker left her “devastated” on a near-daily basis during production of the 2013 film American Hustle.
On whether he regrets his various on-set clashes, Russell said in 2010: “Of course, they’re terrible embarrassing moments and they make me be more vigilant to never ever repeat such a thing. It’s not like I say, ‘Gee, that’s how I work.’
“They are just terrible, bad days for me and for the actor together and it eclipses everything else and what a great time we were having all around that.”
The 67-year-old director has previously referred to Huckabees, which stars Dustin Hoffman and Tomlin, as his least favourite of his films.
Three years after the release of the film, which also starred Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg and Naomi Watts, footage was uploaded to YouTube showing Russell and Tomlin arguing on set.
Telling Russell to “leave me the f*** alone”, Tomlin shouts at him: “Do you know what the f*** is going on, period? F*** you! I’ve had it up to here. Who’s reacting to what, for god sakes? F*** you, motherf***er! F*** you! F*** you! F*** you! Get the thing together! F*** you!”
In an interview the day after the clip was released, Tomlin said that she hadn’t seen the clip before, but that she still “loved David”.
“There was a lot of pressure in making the movie, even the way the movie came out you could see it was a very kind of free-associative, crazy movie, and David was under a tremendous amount of pressure. He’s a very kind of freeform guy, anyway. I never hold a grudge; I never feel bad about anything,” she told the Miami New Times.
Reflecting on the incident in 2015, the Grace and Frankie star said that she and Russell had initially clashed and “made up in just a few hours”, before there was a “second fracas” between the pair.
“By then, I was like stoic in my suffering. But we’ve overcome it. It dissipates and it’s gone,” she recalled to The Hollywood Reporter.
For his part, Russell has said claimed that the set was “one big party, except for maybe one day”.
“The party just went right on past that day, but then that was the day that got remembered,” he told IndieWire of his clash with Tomlin.
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