Tarantino Fired Mélanie Laurent From 'Inglourious Basterds' Over 'Terrible' Table Read

Quentin Tarantino fired Mélanie Laurent from 'Inglourious Basterds' before production began, calling her table read performance unforgivable. He then rehired her after three days of rehearsal, and she delivered one of the defining roles of her career in his 2009 revisionist World War II film.

The revelations come from Jay Glennie's new book, 'The Making of Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds,' now available for purchase. Tarantino spoke to the author with unusual candor about both Laurent and Isabelle Huppert, the second star he fired before cameras rolled.

What happened at the table read?

Tarantino told Glennie that Laurent's first attempt fell short of even a bad reading. 'Mélanie Laurent's table read was terrible. It wasn't good enough to be terrible,' he said, in comments first reported by People.

He explained why the stakes were so high for him. 'The most exciting day of preproduction is for me the table read. That is the closest I get to seeing the movie for the first time,' Tarantino said. 'Well, Mélanie was terrible, so I fired her.'

Days later, Laurent called the director to ask for her job back. She said she had not been feeling well and offered to fly herself back to Germany, put herself up in a hotel, and read for him again. Tarantino admired her passion. He agreed to 'turn the clock back' and 'return to square one' on one condition: three days of rehearsal with him. Whatever she did in those sessions impressed him enough to return the role of Shosanna Dreyfus, the French cinema owner seeking revenge against the Nazi officer who killed her family.

Tarantino insisted the episode carries no lasting resentment. 'Let me just go on the record for everybody to know: I love Mélanie,' he said. 'Mélanie is my Shosanna. She did a wonderful job. But we have decided to dive deep into the making of the movie with this book, and this is an important part of its history. You know, we agreed, warts and all.'

How did Isabelle Huppert lose her role?

Huppert did not get a second chance. Tarantino said she 'didn't show up' to the table read at all, on top of contract negotiations that kept stalling.

'So fuck it. I fired her. I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert — Heaven's Gate and all that — but there were issues with her contract,' Tarantino said. 'And then not coming to the table read. Well, we cast Maggie instead.'

Her role, Madame Ada Mimieux, a woman who shelters Shosanna in Paris, went to 'In the Mood for Love' star Maggie Cheung. Cheung's scenes were ultimately cut from the finished film. Tarantino felt they over-explained the story. 'All we needed was a title card saying Four Years Later and Shosanna explaining that she inherited it from her aunt,' he said.

What does this change for Tarantino's casting practice?

The director offered a blunt summary of his philosophy: attendance and performance are non-negotiable. 'If you're cast and you are not at that table, I don't owe you jack shit! You can be fired, especially if I get excited by what somebody else did in your absence,' he said.

He framed the same principle more broadly. 'I have no moral compass when it comes to giving roles to actors: They have to be right,' Tarantino said. 'I have fired actors in the past. If it's not right, it is not right. I don't owe them shit. I owe my film the best actors I can find. Period.'

The film vindicated his choices. 'Inglourious Basterds' premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, where Christoph Waltz won best actor honors, and opened in theaters that August to $321 million worldwide. Laurent's Shosanna remains her signature role, and the book's disclosures now add a contested origin story to a performance long taken as inevitable.