James McAvoy Says a Co-Star Bullied Him on His First Day as a Pro Actor

By Tom Whitfield

James McAvoy says a fellow actor on HBO's "Band of Brothers" organized a three-minute laughing stunt against him on his first day as a professional actor. He told the story this week on "Watch What Happens Live" while looking back at the 2001 miniseries produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.

McAvoy, then a young drama school graduate in the early 2000s, played Pvt. James Miller — a role that lasted one episode but came packed with dialogue inside a crowded ensemble. That imbalance, he said, was the problem.

What actually happened on set?

"On my first day on set," McAvoy said, "there was a ton of actors… It was one of those scenes with everybody in it, and we're all at a bar." He laid out the grievance plainly: "all these guys were in it for nine months, 10 months, and they get one line in one episode, and one line 10 episodes later. They were all pissed. I come in for one episode, and I've got an arc and scenes. I've got tons of lines."

Host Andy Cohen had shown McAvoy a picture of the "Band of Brothers" ensemble. McAvoy confirmed someone in that photo singled him out. "So, one of the guys in that picture decided to bully me — on my first day as a professional actor out of acting school," he continued. "He got him and his buddies to just stand pointing at me and laugh at me for like three minutes."

He did not name the actor. That omission matters. The anecdote names the behavior, the duration and the scene, but not the person — so anyone in that ensemble photograph now carries the shadow of the story. McAvoy also named his defenders: Dexter Fletcher, who later directed "Rocketman," and Robin Laing. "They took me aside," he said, "and they were like, 'Come hang with us, man.'"

He rated the job overall as "a nine, but that day, it felt like a two." A promising set, in other words, with one bad entrance.

Why the hazing happened

The economics of the miniseries explain the resentment, even if they do not excuse it. Actors locked into a ten-month shoot watched a newcomer collect an arc and "tons of lines" in a single episode. McAvoy's account does not claim malice beyond that pecking order — but it also does not soften it. He used the word "bully" himself.

What came after?

"Band of Brothers" aired in fall 2001 and won multiple Emmys, including best miniseries, plus a Peabody Award. It launched the Hanks-Spielberg wartime television partnership that produced "The Pacific" in 2010 and "Masters of the Air" in 2024.

The cast list reads as a career incubator. Colin Hanks, Damian Lewis and Ron Livingston all built long film and television resumes from it. McAvoy's breakthrough came four years later, as Mr. Tumnus in "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," followed by "Atonement" and a leading career.

What does this change for how we read that ensemble now? Very little on the record — one unnamed actor, one bad day, two colleagues who stepped in. The unnamed detail is the one that will keep the story circulating.