Veteran actor Bruce Dern recently opened up about a tense moment on set between Brad Pitt and director Quentin Tarantino.
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The 89-year-old, who shared a scene with Pitt in 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, recalled that Tarantino threatened the star’s career. In the film, Pitt stars as a stuntman and Hollywood fixer named Cliff Booth. Meanwhile, Dern plays George Spahn, an elderly ranch owner who is surrounded by a crew of suspicious hippie types.
Pitt’s Booth checks in on Dern’s character in a memorably comedic scene. However, the real-life day of shooting included some tense drama, according to Dern. That said, it was sort of Dern’s fault. You see, he improvised a bit while using Tarantino’s script… and it threw Pitt off.
“When Brad Pitt wakes me up in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, I’m in the bed, and I get up, and I’m a little groggy and stuff, and I just say, ‘I’m not really sure what’s going on,’ ” Dern told PEOPLE of his adlibbed moment. “I’m looking at him. [Pitt] cut the camera. He cut the camera. The look on Quentin’s face — I mean, he was insanely grave — and he said, ‘Brad, what did you just do?’ “
“He said, ‘Well, I cut the camera,'” Dern recalled Pitt explaining to the revered director.
Needless to say, this didn’t go over too well with the Pulp Fiction legend.
Bruce Dern Recalls Quentin Tarantino Scolding Brad Pitt: ‘You’ll Be Dead in This Business’
“[Tarantino] said, ‘Never again in your life will you ever cut a camera or you’ll be dead in this business. That’s my domain. Don’t stop behavior.’ So then we went on and did the scene, and all Brad did was say to him, ‘Well, that wasn’t in the script what he said,’ ” Dern added.
Seemingly undeterred from the on-set clash between Pitt and Tarantino, Dern went ahead and improvised a bit more.
“I don’t know who you are, but you touched me today. You came to visit me, now I gotta go back to sleep,” is the dialogue Dern recalls cooking up in the spot. The veteran actor, who also appeared in the Tarantino flicks Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, told PEOPLE that the line was inspired by the support Pitt and his co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio gave him, which “touched” the actor.
Regardless of how rough the tiff was between Pitt and Tarantino, it all seems to be water under the bridge. Not only did Pitt snag an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role, but Tarantino revisited his character for the upcoming The Adventures of Cliff Booth, slated to drop this November.