Quentin Tarantino Fired Isabelle Huppert and Mélanie Laurent

“She didn’t show up, so f*** it. I fired her,” filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said of casting Isabelle Huppert in Inglourious Basterds.

Jay Glennie’s book, The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, reveals casting conflicts from the 2009 war epic. Tarantino dismissed French actor Isabelle Huppert and briefly let go of Mélanie Laurent before filming. He said his primary obligation is to the film rather than individual actors.

Isabelle Huppert was initially cast as Madame Ada Mimieux to shelter Shosanna in Paris. Contract negotiations stalled, and she missed the first table read.

“I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert — Heaven’s Gate and all that — but there were issues with her contract. It just kept stalling. And then not coming to the table read. Well, we cast Maggie Cheung instead,” Tarantino said, according to excerpts published by People.

The director expects attendance at preproduction readings. “As far as I’m concerned, if you’re cast and you are not at that table, I don’t owe you jack s***! You can be fired, especially if I get excited by what somebody else did in your absence,” Tarantino said.

Maggie Cheung replaced Huppert, but those scenes were cut from the final film. Tarantino said a title card and dialogue replaced the need for scenes showing how Shosanna acquired the cinema.

Mélanie Laurent faced dismissal when her performance at the table read failed to impress. She was let go shortly after the session.

“The most exciting day of preproduction is for me the table read,” Tarantino said.

“That is the closest I get to seeing the movie for the first time. Up until then, it’s just been me reading all the scenes to myself or to a friend … so, a table read with the whole cast is so exciting and so important to me. Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her.”

Days later, Laurent contacted the director. She said she was unwell during the reading and offered to fly to Germany to audition again. Tarantino agreed to three days of rehearsals. He reinstated her as Shosanna Dreyfus, and she earned critical acclaim.

Tarantino says his choices serve his cinematic universe. “I have no moral compass when it comes to giving roles to actors: They have to be right. They have to feel like they are right for the world I have created,” Tarantino said, as reported by Yahoo Entertainment.

“I have fired actors in the past. If it’s not right, it is not right. I don’t owe them s***. I owe my film the best actors I can find. Period.” He said his primary obligation is to the film.