Jake Gyllenhaal has a stellar career to his name with several memorable and astounding roles crowning the actor as one of the front-line Hollywood heroes. However, he has also been wild while shaping his roles. French director Thomas Bidegain’s potential English language debut was almost with a Gyllenhaal starrer movie.
However, there were several reports from the set that explicitly highlighted the actor’s exhibition of erratic behavior in the pre-production of the movie. Gyllenhaal was also set to produce the survival thriller while Vanessa Kirby was roped in to star alongside him. Bidegain has finally explained the details of what happened on the set of the movie.
Jake Gyllenhaal Stripped Down to His Underwear in Front of the Crew
Jake Gyllenhaal is in the buzz for his upcoming Doug Liman film, Road House. However, the actor has surfaced in the discussion regarding a canceled indie movie where he was accused of exhibiting erratic behavior on set. The movie was based on Isabelle Autissier’s French-language novel Soudain Seuls. As the premise of the story goes, Gyllenhaal and his Everest co-star Vanessa Kirby were stranded on an island in the South Atlantic. However, the actor, as Thomas Bidegain claimed while speaking with Technikart, was in a different mood. He stripped down to swim in the freezing ocean.
“When I see the sea, I swim in the sea,” Gyllenhaal explained to the director after undressing and ready to dive into the freezing water of the Icelandic coast shocking the technical team present at the scene. The French director also claimed that the Southpaw actor read the script in a “Pepe Le Pew” accent with his co-star, Vanessa Kirby.
However, these behaviors were just the tip of the iceberg, per Bidegain. Gyllenhaal was not in line with the original script scribed by the director himself. The Nightcrawler star had different ideas as he demanded to make his character a military veteran and proposed the idea of slapping a fish. Further, he forced the crew to sleep in their cars due to the COVID-19 protocols.
A Reaction From Jake Gyllenhaal on Thomas Bidegain’s Claim
With a heavy heart, Bidegain had to pull the plug on the indie survival thriller. He went on to add that Gyllenhaal’s demands were specific as he wanted the color of his vehicle “neither red nor white.” Also, Gyllenhaal and Kirby, as he told Technikart, read the script in an unbearable French accent similar to the Pepé Le Pew cartoon character, “It was a little humiliating” for the director.
However, Bidegain’s claim is just one side of the story. Representatives of Gyllenhaal and Studiocanal (the studio that financed the movie) refuted the claim made by the director while speaking with AV Club. They claimed that the English language of Suddenly was never a green light, and Gyllenhaal and Kirby went to Iceland only for the development process of the film.“Creative differences are very normal, if unfortunate, regularities in film development,” a Studiocanal spokesperson told the outlet.
“In this case, there were concerns which simply could not be overcome despite great efforts on both sides. We greatly value all our relationships at STUDIOCANAL and are happy that Thomas Bidegain was able to fulfill his vision on the French language version of SUDDENLY. We remain deeply committed to our working partnerships with both Thomas Bidegain and Jake Gyllenhaal, with whom we have always enjoyed a very strong creative relationship.”
Bidegain ended up living with only the French version of the film. Still, the director had felt like shattering his dream. As for Gyllenhaal, the 43-year-old will appear in the upcoming action thriller Road House, set to hit the theater on 8 March 2024.
