Shia LaBeouf is opening up about his experience working with Francis Ford Coppola on Megalopolis, revealing that he “became a nuisance” to the acclaimed director due to his excessive inquiries and inability to grasp Coppola’s vision.
In an expansive interview alongside playwright and filmmaker David Mamet, LaBeouf spoke about how his and Coppola’s disparate idiosyncrasies often led to frustrations on set of the sprawling sci-fi drama, which had been a decades-long passion project for Coppola but ended up as a high-profile flop.
“Coppola thinks he’s Dave,” LaBeouf told The Hollywood Reporter, referencing Mamet. “He really believes he’s this theater director guy. He’s not. But he believes he is. He thinks he’s the actor’s guy — but he’s not. That’s not to say he’s not incredible, it’s just not what his incredible is. It’s not helpful to the actor to get overt notes.”
Max Cisotti/Dave Benett/Getty
Shia LaBeouf at the ‘Megalopolis’ premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival
Coppola was “very specific” with his direction, “but his specificity wasn’t on the page,” LaBeouf said. “So I can’t share your dream. With Coppola, a lot needs to be talked about. Maybe it’s just the movie that I worked on him with, but it felt like we had to mine his mind to figure out what the f— we were even talking about. It wasn’t normal language. It was this archaic rhythm that he was chasing.”
The actor added, “It became a lot of questions on my end, which required answers, which frustrated our relationship. I became a nuisance.” The end product was “way wackier than I thought,” he admitted. “I never thought we were going for wacky. I thought my character was wacky and I served that for the film. But I didn’t think the whole movie was wacky.”
Released in 2024 and inspired by Roman history, Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as a brilliant architect who strives to rebuild a futuristic New York City-esque metropolis into a utopia. Featuring a splashy ensemble cast and made on a $120 million budget, the film garnered mixed reviews and fizzled at the box office, earning less than $15 million worldwide.
LaBeouf recalled being “very scared about what Coppola had given me” early on in the project, “because it didn’t make sense to me and I didn’t feel comfortable.” He added, “I had done one rehearsal and he gave me a look — and I never asked him another question about the character. But he was getting questions from Driver that would exhaust him. Driver needed answers, too. So by the time he was available to me, the energy was different. And I had to be respectful about all that. You want to be respectful, but you want to be good.”
Representatives for Coppola didn’t immediately respond to Entertainment Weekly‘s request for comment Thursday.
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Francis Ford Coppola at his AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony
LaBeouf and Mamet have teamed up for the upcoming Henry Johnson, a big-screen adaptation of Mamet’s 2023 play and his first feature in more than a decade. LaBeouf plays an incarcerated man grappling with his moral compass.
The actor — who has been involved in a string of controversies, including a lawsuit from ex-girlfriend FKA Twigs that accuses him of sexual battery and mental and physical abuse — hopes the role will be a “gateway to rehabilitation.” (LaBeouf has acknowledged harmful behavior but denied Twigs’ allegations of battery and abuse. The case goes to trial in September.)
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“I hope my whole life is squaring things, getting it right,” LaBeouf told THR. “It’s what I want to do with the rest of my life. And there’s a lot of things to get right.”
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