Sir Ridley Scott didn’t tell Kevin Spacey he was replacing him in ‘All the Money in the World’.
The Hollywood filmmaker decided to drop the actor from the movie and reshoot the scenes with Christopher Plummer in the role after Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct.
Asked if he contacted Spacey, he said: "No. And he didn’t call me. If he had called me and said, ‘Hey, look, this is the way it is and I’m really sorry,’ then I’d have handled it slightly differently. I’d have still done it [replaced him]. I would have said, ‘Yes, thank you for calling, but I have to move on.’"
Scott was working on the music for the movie – which is still slated for release on December 22 – when he heard the first allegations, that Spacey had made a sexual advance to Anthony Rapp when Rapp was just 14.
Speaking about where he was when he heard about the allegations, he added: "I was finished with the film and was in Abbey Road [recording studio] finalising the music. Someone was like: Guess what? And that’s where it began. I sat and thought about it and realised, we cannot. You can’t tolerate any kind of behaviour like that. And it will affect the film. We cannot let one person’s action affect the good work of all these other people. It’s that simple."
And the 79-year-old director thinks it is "miraculous" that he managed to get everyone back – including Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams – to London and Rome for the reshoots, which took place over the last week.
He told Entertainment Weekly: "You have to know who you’re going to go for [to recast the role] and if he’s available. Chris [Plummer] was always on the list. So you find that out, but quietly, because you don’t want it going around. I flew into New York and met with [Plummer] and he said yes. So then we had to figure out if everyone else would be available to fit in these new days of shooting. Miraculously, they were. Before you can make the decision you have to make these quick phone calls around – not to the actors directly, but to the agents – saying there’s a possibility I may need some pickups [additional shooting days]. You don’t say why because of the gossip, but of course it was really for something much more significant."
Sir Ridley Scott didn’t tell Kevin Spacey he was being placed
