Years before Joaquin Phoenix left Todd Haynes hanging, he dropped out of another major director’s film with days to spare.
James McAvoy recently recounted his “last minute” preparation for the starring role in M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2016 thriller Split after the Oscar-winning actor exited the production two weeks before filming kicked off in Philadelphia.
“I’m confident enough to think I’ll do it better. I’m joking!” said McAvoy on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “He’s an amazing actor. I think he’d give a very different performance to the one I did, but I think he’d give an incredible performance.”
He added, “Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way. I think he ditched it two weeks before they started shooting. It was really last minute. I had two weeks.”
McAvoy stars in Split as Kevin, a man living with more than 20 personalities, one of which orchestrates the abduction of three teen girls (portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Jessica Sula). He reprised the role in the 2019 sequel Glass, which also served as the concluding installment in the trilogy that began with 2000’s Unbreakable.
Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula and James McAvoy in Split (2016). (John Baer/Universal Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
“The script was well put together so a lot of it was pretty clear what I wanted to do straight away,” he explained. “There were a couple of characters that took a little bit longer to find. Patricia came real quick, Dennis came real quick. Hedwig took a little while. It wasn’t until the read-through for the table read which I was really nervous for.
“I’m sitting there like, ‘God, I’ve got to do all these 15 characters and be judged by everybody in the room, including Universal studio executives including Jason Blum, and I haven’t even found some of the characters.’ It just came on really quick,” McAvoy added.
The revelation comes after Phoenix reportedly stormed off the set of Haynes’ gay romance in July as filming was set to begin in Guadalajara, Mexico. Production is dead on the film, which was set to co-star Danny Ramirez.
McAvoy also recalled dropping out of the running for a Harry Potter role earlier in his career as the seven-month audition process would have kept him out of work during that time.
“I auditioned for it and I think they wanted to put me on a retainer,” he explained. “I’d hardly done any work and me and I think ten other actors, they wanted to put us in a retainer so that they could hold us and keep us to choose later.”
The actor noted of the “really strange” process, “And they offered quite a lot of money. For me at that time, it was a ton of money. It was like 40 thousand pounds or something like that. I’d done very little work and I wouldn’t be able to do any work for about seven months, I think.”
After his agent advised him against it, McAvoy turned down the retainer and went on to a role that paid 275 pounds a week, but he has no regrets. “It was part of the making of me. I was actually learning and doing all that,” said McAvoy.