When Tarantino fired Mélanie Laurent and Isabelle Huppert from Inglourious Basterds

In a behind-the-scenes book about Inglourious Basterds, QT recounts how he thanked Mélanie Laurent before returning her role. Isabelle Huppert was not so lucky.

Quentin Tarantino is not always kind to actors.

Paul Dano paid the price recently. But before him, others had to accept the very high level of demands of the filmmaker. Starting with Mélanie Laurent…

We learn in fact, in a new book devoted to the behind the scenes ofInglourious Basterdsthat the young French actress was thanked by the American director, after a catastrophic reading of the script… before finally giving her back her role. At the same time, QT also fired Isabelle Huppert from his film.

In this work entitled The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterdswritten by Jay Glennie and dedicated to the making of the film released in 2009, Quentin Tarantino remembers how Mélanie Laurent became Shosanna Dreyfus, a cinema owner in Paris, who seeks revenge on the Nazi officer responsible for the death of her family. A casting that was not easy…

During the traditional reading of the script with the entire cast, the French actress did not convince the director. To say the least:

“Mélanie Laurent’s reading was horrible. It wasn’t even good enough for the term horrible…“

Quentin Tarantino then explains the particular importance of this exercise in his eyes:

“The most exciting day of pre-production, for me, is reading the script. It’s the closest I’ve come to seeing the film for the first time. Until then, it’s just me reading all the scenes, by myself or to a friend… So a reading with the whole cast is something so exciting and so important to me. Well, Melanie was bad, so I fired her!“

But the story doesn’t end there. A few days later, Mélanie Laurent called the filmmaker back to try to recover her role. She explains to him that she was unwell during this famous reading and suggests that he return to Germany at his own expense, take a hotel room and re-audition. Touched by her determination, Tarantino agrees to start from scratch, on the condition that she agrees to three days of rehearsals with him. A second chance which will pay off: the actress finally convinces the director to give her the role of Shosanna. The filmmaker also wants to set things straight and salute the work of his actress:

“I want to make things clear to everyone: I love Mélanie. In fact, if we weren’t talking about the making of Inglourious Basterds, I would never think about reading it again. Quite simply because Mélanie is my Shosanna. She did a wonderful job. But we decided to delve behind the scenes of the film with this book, and it’s an important part of its story. You know, we agreed to tell everything… If we hadn’t decided to talk about the shooting, it would have slipped my memory and I would never think about it again.“

For Isabelle Huppert, on the other hand, the story ended much more abruptly. The French actress was to play Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who shelters Shosanna in Paris. But she did not show up for the script reading, against a backdrop of dragging contractual negotiations. Tarantino then decided to replace her with Maggie Cheung, revealed in particular by In the Mood for Love. The filmmaker says:

“She didn’t show up! So fuck, too bad, I fired her. I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert – Heaven’s Gates and all that – but there were problems with her contract. It kept dragging. And then she didn’t come to the script reading… So we took Maggie instead.”

The director continues, without really trying to smooth out the angles: “This happens regularly. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re hired and you’re not present for this reading, I owe you absolutely nothing! You can be fired, especially if I’m excited about what someone else did in your absence.“

Ironically, none of Maggie Cheung’s scenes were ultimately kept in the edit. Tarantino felt that the sequences around Madame Ada Mimieux explained too much to the viewer. “Maggie was fantastic in the film, but we just didn’t need to know how Shosanna got the movie. All we needed was a card saying ‘Four Years Later’ and Shosanna explaining that she had inherited it from her aunt.”

This anecdote illustrates quite well Quentin Tarantino’s radical method when it comes to the casting of his films:

“I have no moral compass when it comes to giving roles to actors: they have to be the right ones. They have to give the impression of belonging to the universe that I created. I’ve fired actors in the past. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. I don’t owe them anything. I owe it to my film to find the best possible actors. That’s all.“

Presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, Inglourious Basterds then met with immense commercial success, with $321 million in revenue worldwide.