Abdellatif Kechiche calls Seydoux an 'arrogant, spoiled child' and says he 'will come back' to demand explanation from her in court.
- Oct 24, 2013
AceShowbiz - Abdellatif Kechiche fired back at his "Blue Is the Warmest Color" cast, specifically Lea Seydoux, after she called the experience of shooting the film with him as a director "horrible." In an open letter posted on French news site Rue89, Kechiche slammed the actress as an "arrogant, spoiled child," and suggested that he might take their dispute to court.
"Miss Seydoux, after thanking me innumerable times in public and private, after crying in my arms in Cannes for having given her such a noble role for having allowed her to sublimate herself in this dramatic art, with no delay and with no personal coherence, radically changed her attitude toward me and risked the destruction of this already-fragile film a few weeks from its release," he said as quoted by The Wrap.
In an interview with The Daily Beast earlier this year, Seydoux blatantly said she would "never" work with Kechiche again. The 28-year-old French star said that she felt "trapped" on set and that the director "didn't really know what he wanted." "We spent weeks shooting scenes. Even crossing the street was difficult," she added.
"Thus after having been celebrated and glorified thanks to the Palme d'Or won by Blue Is the Warmest Color, she started to drag me through the mud with lies and exaggerations," Kechiche reacted. "How to explain such serious accusations, and a 180-degree reversal a year after the production, after so many demonstrations of admiration, love and gratitude?"
The director went on, "I see nothing more there than flagrant nonsense ... and beyond that, perverse fakery and the worst kind of manipulation in a context where she knew that such lies would have a disastrous effect." He said Seydoux "knew her words were slanderous," and threatened, "I will come back. It is for her to explain in court."
Another cast member Adele Exarchopoulos was with Seydoux during the interview that irked Kechiche. But Adele, while she also said she didn't want to work with the director again, was more lenient in her comment.
"In every shoot, there are things that you can't plan for, but every genius has his own complexity. [Kechiche] is a genius, but he's tortured. We wanted to give everything we have, but sometimes there was a kind of manipulation, which was hard to handle. But it was a good learning experience for me, as an actor," Adele said.
"He warned us that we had to trust him - blind trust - and give a lot of ourselves. He was making a movie about passion, so he wanted to have sex scenes, but without choreography," she uttered. "So he asked me if I was ready to make it, and I said, 'Yeah, of course!' because I'm young and pretty new to cinema. But once we were on the shoot, I realized that he really wanted us to give him everything."
