Rebecca Romijn ‘Was Not Happy Working’ for Brett Ratner on ‘X-Men: The Last Stand,’ Calls Bryan Singer a ‘Fantastic Filmmaker’ Despite Set Drama

Jerry O’Connell jumped into action when he saw a food truck on fire in Malibu, California.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Robert Downey Jr. and Jimmy Fallon crashed a recent episode of “The Howard Stern Show” and revealed they auditioned together for Nancy Meyers’ 2006 romantic-comedy “The Holiday.” Downey Jr. read for the part later played by Jude Law, while Fallon auditioned for Jack Black’s role. Both actors knew they weren’t Meyers’ frontrunner picks at the time, and Downey Jr. was well aware Jude Law was stiff competition. “We both got called in just as seat fillers…[director Nancy Meyers] needed someone to read with the gals and we’re sitting there going, ‘It’s about to happen for us,’” Downey said, adding that he felt he was a “shoe-in” to steal the part away from Law. “And I was like, ‘I’ve got to have a better English accent than Jude Law at this point.’ And Winslet said, ‘That was the worst British accent I’ve ever heard.’ And I was like, ‘I’ll check out now, but I’m taking the gummy bears from the minibar.'”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Patrick Wilson said in an interview on the “Reelblend” podcast that Zack Snyder’s “Watchmen” adaptation helped pave the way for “The Avengers” and the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe to take a much lighter approach to the comic book genre. Snyder’s dark and operatic take on Alan Moore’s graphic novel proved divisive, as the film didn’t even make it past $200 million at the worldwide box office. Wilson revealed “Watchmen” is “the only movie of mine that I have watched front to back since a premiere,” adding, ‘That movie is awesome.” “I just wanted to look at it as an older guy, as a filmmaker,” Wilson added. “I knew Zack was ahead of the curve. It’s weird to say that audiences weren’t ready for it. But you need a movie like that. You need movies to go so dark that then ‘Avengers’ can go so light. I do believe in that…I’d love to do that movie now. It would be so awesome to just do it now.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” almost pulled an “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” by opening with an extended sequence featuring a de-aged version of its main star. “Dial of Destiny” de-aged Harrison Ford to mixed results for a 25-minute opener. “Dead Reckoning” director Christopher McQuarrie ultimately nixed an idea to de-age Tom Cruise because the technology just isn’t convincing enough yet. “Originally, there had been a whole sequence at the beginning of the movie that was going to take place in 1989,” McQuarrie told GamesRadar+ and Total Film. “We talked about it as a cold open, we talked about it as flashbacks in the movie, we looked at de-aging.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Despite reports over the years that Warner Bros. was courting the likes of Donald Glover, Ezra Miller and Ryan Gosling to play Willy Wonka, it was only Timothée Chalamet who got the offer to lead director Paul King’s prequel musical “Wonka.” And Chalamet didn’t even have to audition. King recently told Rolling Stone that he was a Chalamet “stan” and thus knew the actor had the singing and dancing chops required to play Wonka. “It was a straight offer because he’s great and he was the only person in my mind who could do it,” King said. “But because he’s Timothée Chalamet and his life is so absurd, his high school musical performances are on YouTube and have hundreds of thousands of views. So I knew from stanning for Timmy Chalamet that he could sing and dance really well.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Reese Witherspoon said in a new interview with Harper’s Bazaar that filming a sex scene at 19 years old for the 1996 thriller “Fear” was not “a particularly great experience.” Directed by James Foley, “Fear” stars Witherspoon as a teenager who falls for a sinister young man played by Mark Wahlberg. One of the film’s buzziest scenes centers on Witherspoon’s character having an orgasm on a rollercoaster while being pleasured by Mark Wahlberg’s character. “I didn’t have control over it,” Witherspoon said about filming the sex scene, adding that she requested a stunt double be used for the below-the-waist shots. “It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director In a new video interview with GQ magazine, Harrison Ford revealed that he pushed back against Indiana Jones’ iconic costume when he first saw the plans for his character during the development of Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981). The costume included a leather jacket, a bullwhip and a pinch-front fedora that Ford stapled to his head during production so that it would not fly off during action scenes. Ford told GQ he still has the staple scars. “It was presented to me as an aspect of character in the first film,” Ford said about Indiana Jones’ costume. “My questions about it were many. Why am I wearing a leather jacket in the jungle? Isn’t it hot here? Why am I carrying a whip? What am I going to do with a fucking whip? I’m going to whip people?”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director When thinking of the most important movie in Robert Downey Jr.’s filmography over the last 25 years, one might naturally assume the answer is “Iron Man,” the 2008 superhero tentpole that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe and changed the blockbuster landscape in Hollywood. But that’s not the movie Downey Jr. himself would pick. In a new interview with The New York Times Magazine, the Oscar nominee cited 2006’s “The Shaggy Dog” and 2020’s infamous “Dolittle” flop as his most important titles. “I finished the Marvel contract and then hastily went into what had all the promise of being another big, fun, well-executed potential franchise in ‘Dolittle,'” Downey Jr. said. “I had some reservations. Me and my team seemed a little too excited about the deal and not quite excited enough about the merits of the execution. But at that point I was bulletproof. I was the guru of all genre movies. Honestly, the two most important films I’ve done in the last 25 years are ‘The Shaggy Dog,’ because that was the film that got Disney saying they would insure me. Then the second most important film was ‘Doolittle,’ because ‘Dolittle’ was a two-and-a-half-year wound of squandered opportunity.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Rainn Wilson told Bill Maher on the latter’s “Club Random” podcast that he spent “several years” on NBC’s “The Office” unhappy because he failed to become a movie star. Wilson, who starred as Dwight Schrute on the beloved sitcom, was a main cast member on all nine seasons of the show. “When I was in‘The Office,’ I spent several years really mostly unhappy because it wasn’t enough,” Wilson admitted. “I’m realizing now, like, I’m on a hit show, Emmy nominated every year, making lots of money, working with Steve Carell and Jenna Fisher and John Krasinski and these amazing writers and incredible directors like Paul Feig. I’m on one of the great TV shows. People love it. I wasn’t enjoying it. I was thinking about, ‘Why am I not a movie star? Why am I not the next Jack Black or the next Will Ferrell? How come I can’t have a movie career? Why don’t I have this development deal?'”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director A July 2000 clip from “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” has gone viral on social media for featuring the eponymous late night host making a joke to Harrison Ford about the actor playing Indiana Jones when he’s 80 years old. That panned out to be somewhat true in the recently-released “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which opened in theaters just a few weeks before Ford turns 81 years old. “People will never get tired of that genre,” O’Brien told Ford at the time. “When you’re 80 you could just do ones where they bring the treasures to you.” Ford burst into laughter, with O’Brien adding that an “Indiana Jones” movie starring an 80-year-old Harrison Ford could be titled, “Indiana Jones and the Comfortable Bed.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Musician and actor Dominic Fike admitted in a video interview with Apple Music that he was a “drug addict” when he joined the second season of HBO’s “Euphoria.” He was cast as Elliot, a drug user who perpetuates Rue’s relapse and finds himself in a love triangle with Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer). According to Fike, the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, tried to hire a “sober coach” to keep Fike clean in real life, but the plan failed. “I was a drug addict and coming on to a show that’s, you know, mainly about drugs, is very difficult,” Fike told Zane Lowe. “Sam [Levinson], the director and writer, got me a sober coach, somebody to be there all the time. It did not work.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director “The Idol” actor Jane Adams called out “feminists” in a recent Vanity Fair interview for persisting that the controversial HBO series exploited its female actors on set when many of them, from Lily-Rose Depp to Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Adams herself, have stressed otherwise. “What is amazing to me is no one’s listening—I’ve not seen that before in all my days, such a dogged ‘We refuse to change the narrative,’” Adams said. “I especially want to say to all the feminists, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ All these women that I’m working with are talking about their experience and you’re not listening. You’re not listening!”

Rebecca Romijn says she didn’t previously speak up at the height of the #MeToo era because the two directors she had "major issues" with already "got theirs." "I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything," the "X-Men" actress told The Independent Wednesday. "I know the two people that I worked with had it coming, and they got theirs."  One of those directors was Brett Ratner, who worked with Romijn, 50, in "X-Men: The Last Stand."  The supermodel, who played Mystique in the original trilogy, said she didn't "want to throw anyone under the bus ... except for Brett Ratner." "I was not happy working with him, but he’s been canceled," she said of Ratner.

Rebecca Romijn is addressing her time working with two controversial directors from her time with the X-Men.

accused of sexual misconduct by at least four men, who were allegedly underage at the time. Brett Ratner, 54, who directed Romijn in “X-Men: The Last Stand,” has also been accused of sexual misconduct by several women, including Olivia Munn and actress Natasha Henstridge. “Juno” actor Elliot Page also spoke out about being harassed and outed by Ratner as a vulnerable young person in Hollywood, struggling with their sexuality.So, why didn’t Romijn say anything when she worked with these two directors, and the #MeToo movement was shining a light on actions by other celebs such as Louis CK and James Franco? She told The Independent that it was hard to reconcile Singer’s filmmaking — which she claims to have had a positive experience with — with his actions. “He’s a fantastic filmmaker, you know? It was amazing watching him work.

While Rebecca Romijn initially did not address X-Men directors Brett Ratner and Bryan Singer’s respective misconduct scandals, she is no longer staying silent.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford roasted Conan O’Brien on a recent episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast after the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” icon discovered O’Brien had “Han Solo” written down in his notes for the interview. The two men were playfully arguing about Ford’s ancestry, which led O’Brien to consult some info he had jotted down prior to the interview. “I refer you to this piece of paper right here,” O’Brien said. “That says, ‘Born and raised in Chicago to an Irish German father—'” Ford leaned over to take a look at O’Brien’s notes and then interrupted the host when he realized they included a reminder that Ford played Han Solo in the “Star Wars” franchise. Along with Indiana Jones, Han Solo is Ford’s most iconic character.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan movie, “A Complete Unknown,” is supposed to kick off filming in August, but don’t call it a Bob Dylan biopic. During a recent appearance on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast (via IndieWire), the film’s director, James Mangold, said “A Complete Unknown” is “not really a Bob Dylan biopic” but a movie about “a very specific moment” in the 1960s folk scene of New York City. The film’s specificity is one reason the real Bob Dylan “has been so supportive of us making it,” the filmmaker reasoned. “The best true-life movies are never cradle to grave but they’re about a very specific moment,” Mangold said. “In this case, it might be presumptuous to call it Altman-esque, but it’s a kind of ensemble piece about this moment in time, the early ’60s in New York, and this 17-year-old kid with $16 in his pockets hitchhikes his way to New York to meet Woody Guthrie who is in the hospital and is dying of a nerve disease. He sings Woody a song that he wrote for him and befriends Pete Seeger, who is like a son to Woody, and Pete sets him up with gigs at local clubs and there you meet Joan Baez and all these other people who are part of this world.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Harrison Ford just wrapped up his tenure as Indiana Jones in the franchise’s fifth installment, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which opened in theaters just a few weeks before the actor’s 81st birthday. Tom Cruise hopes to have the same longevity when it comes to playing Ethan Hunt in Paramount’s long-running “Mission: Impossible” franchise. Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald at the Australian premiere of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” Cruise said he wants to keep making “Mission: Impossible” movies until he is Ford’s age. Cruise just turned 61 years old on July 3, 2023. “Harrison Ford is a legend; I hope to be still going. I’ve got 20 years to catch up with him,” Cruise said. “I hope to keep making ‘Mission: Impossible’ films until I’m his age.”

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Anthony Mackie told Inverse that he was so nervous to shoot opposite Harrison Ford on their first day of filming “Captain America: Brave New World” that he forgot the script. Marvel’s upcoming fourth “Captain America” movie finds Mackie’s Sam Wilson stepping into the title role for the first time in a feature film. Ford is a new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, replacing the late William Hurt as Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. “The first day was so intimidating,” Mackie said. “I was so fucking nervous I couldn’t remember my lines. He’s Harrison fucking Ford. There is this aura about him. But he dispels that really quickly because he’s such a cool guy. He’s everything a movie star should be. He would say, ‘Let’s shoot this piece of shit.’ And everybody was like, ‘Yeah, let’s shoot this shit.’”