Shia LaBeouf arrested in New Orleans for alleged altercation
Shia LaBeouf has been arrested in New Orleans following an alleged altercation during Mardi Gras celebrations. The actor has been charged with two counts of simple battery.
Scott Eastwood is looking back on the moment things got so “tense” with his costar Shia LaBeouf that Brad Pitt had to step in.
During an appearance on the “Armchair Expert” podcast released Aug. 3, the “Lucky Strike” actor, 40, looked back on an incident where he almost got into a fight with LaBeouf on the set of their 2014 movie “Fury.”
“Brad Pitt sort of broke up a tense moment,” Eastwood recalled, explaining it went down when LaBeouf “was having an episode” and “thought that I shouldn’t be spitting tobacco” on a tank, even though it “was in the script.”
Eastwood, who said he had been trying to “keep clear” of the “tormented” actor on set, remembered cursing out LaBeouf. The dustup occurred about midway through production, and Eastwood said it wasn’t an anomaly.
“Everyone had moments with Shia that were, I think at one point, going to come to blows or not,” he said. “It’s funny, the film industry, it attracts psychopaths.”
USA TODAY has reached out to a representative for LaBeouf for comment.
Eastwood previously spoke about the moment with LaBeouf in a 2014 British GQ article. At the time, the “Regretting You” actor slammed LaBeouf for being a “complete pain” and described how he “was in the middle of a scene with Brad Pitt, and I was chewing tobacco,” and LaBeouf “didn’t like what I was doing, so he said I couldn’t be spitting tobacco on his tank, and he told me to clean it up.”
Pitt, though, gave a slightly different account, saying he was the first to tell Eastwood not to spit on the tank.
“Shia saw it and felt the same – he’s disrespecting our home. So Shia had the same reaction I did, and started having some words,” Pitt told GQ, adding that he “had to get in after the cameras were rolling, and explain it to Scotty.” But Pitt did point out that “we got home at the end of the day and read the script, it said Scotty’s character is ‘chewing tobacco and spitting it on the back of the tank,'” so “he was just doing as instructed in the script!”
Eastwood later opened up about the “volatile moment” in a 2022 interview with Insider.
“I never think your process as an actor should ever hinder how people are treated on set,” he said. “It should always enhance the production, not take away and put people in a situation where it’s a [bad] work environment or you’re rude or people have to be in an uncomfortable situation.”
Pitt starred as a tank commander during World War II in “Fury” alongside LaBeouf, Eastwood, Logan LermanMichael Peña and Jon Bernthal. Though Eastwood may not have had the best experience working with LaBeouf, he praised Pitt on “Armchair Expert” as a “consummate pro” and the “nicest guy.”