UPDATED 12/30 3:30 p.m. ET: Following comments she made on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Courtney Love has released a statement addressing her claim Brad Pitt got her fired from Fight Club.
"Hi. Regarding a story I told on the @marcmaron #WTF podcast. A story I was never going to tell. Brad pushed me a bridge too far," wrote Love on Instagram. "I don’t like the way he does business or wields his power. It’s a simple fact, and it started during the production of Fight Club."
As she explained it, Love was replaced in the film ahead of production by Helena Bonham Carter after she got into an argument with Pitt. She said that the actor wanted to portray her late husband Kurt Cobain in a biopic from director-writer Gus Van Sant, who later made a film inspired by but not based on the Nirvana frontman in 2005 with Last Days. She wasn’t happy about his insistence on the role, and as a result he allegedly got her fired from Fight Club.
“I understand how much of a game of roulette casting is,” she continued. “I am not here 22 years later bitching about losing a part playing someone’s side piece in a movie. On the podcast, I recount the day Brad & Gus Van Sant called me from lunch and tried to blackmail me over my role, for a rights to a film about Kurt. I lost my shit on them, and by 7pm I was fired from Fight Club. Every word of this is factual. This was always a secret that I was fine keeping. It’s a movie. Indeed, I passed on better roles than that. Who cares?”
She accused Pitt of “stalking” her “about Kurt,” which led to resentment between the two. “With all this resentment in our history, one might ask why I took yet another pitch for Kurt’s film from Brad after all these years? It’s because I’m in recovery,” she continued. “And resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. I was over being mad about it. Plus, I heard Pitt was dealing with the same demons. So, we might have both changed our spiritual world views. Not to be.”
The two later spoke in 2020 about Pitt producing a Kurt Cobain biopic, but she said no to the idea. “That was not enough, and I was not heard,” she added. “I was ignored. I had no plans to bring it up with Marc Maron but up it came. I told the story because I felt Pitt would not stop pursuing Kurt–unless I said it in public. I don’t want Brad to be pissed off at me and become his resentment. I want him to do better. I’m not into assault. Cmon brother Pitt. I wish you well, truly. If he’s mad at me, that’s his problem. I enjoy him as a movie star immensely. Not so much as a biopic producer.”
She wrapped up her message by making it clear she bears no ill will to anyone else involved in the production of Fight Club. “Hope this clarifies, and thanks for your time. I’m sure Helena Bonham Carter was utterly meant to be Marla Singer and I do not bear her or Edward Norton or David Fincher or Art Linson — all people whose work & genius I respect immensely — any ill will,” she wrote.
Pitt has not responded to Love’s comments on the matter.
See original story from 12/29/2022 below.
In an alternate universe, Courtney Love might have been in David Fincher’s 1999 film Fight Club.
But according to the singer, she got fired from the film after she had a disagreement with Brad Pitt.
“I get the role, so the lawyers have called the lawyers—this is my role,” she told Marc Maron on a recent episode of his WTF podcast.“We’d done all these table reads, I’d gone to work privately with David [Fincher], and I get this phone call and it’s from Gus Van Sant, and Gus is having lunch with Brad Pitt… He goes, ‘Brad really wants to do a movie about music.’”
That’s when Van Sant offered the idea of doing a movie about Kurt Cobain, who passed away in 1994.
“It was like the hellmouth opened, oh my God, ‘We wanna do it about Kurt!’ And 22 years later I still kick myself for not having the shark instinct to be like, ‘Sure,’ and fuck ‘em later. I went nuclear. ‘I don’t do Faust, who the fuck do you think you are?!’”
Edward Norton, who also stars in the film, and Love were dating back then, and the news tore him up, with Love saying he was “sobbing” and particularly upset because “his mother had just died.” He told her at the time, “‘I don’t have the power!’”
According to Love, she then received a call from Fincher who fired her. “My landline rang and it was David Fincher. I knew it was gonna be him,” she said. “And yeah, he fired me because I wouldn’t let Brad play Kurt.” She also added that while she’s still never seen Fight Club, Helena Bonham Carter—who ended up playing Marla—is a “genius.”
Pitt still attempted to make a movie about Cobain, which Love never agreed to. Van Sant tried to do the same with the 2005 film Last Days, though, due to legal issues, he couldn’t actually name the character after the late Nirvana musician or use exact details from his life.
Listen to Courtney Love’s episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast below.
