Jennifer Lawrence lasted exactly one day on a Kevin Costner set. The Oscar winner had been brought on for a supporting role in Costner’s latest Western, according to people on the production. By the end of her first day, she was gone.
Costner has made it pretty clear lately that he runs a strict “no woke” policy on his projects. He wants stories told the old way, with no lectures and no rewrites to please activists. Lawrence, it seems, didn’t get the memo.
“She couldn’t do it,” said Costner’s talent coordinator, Dave Sohinki. “She found a dozen things in the script that offended her.”
Sohinki said the trouble started at the table read. Lawrence flagged one scene after another, asking for lines to be changed and characters to be rewritten. Some of her notes were about the way the film portrayed ranchers. Others were about the dialogue, which she reportedly called “dated.”
“Every few pages she’d stop and say, ‘We can’t say that,'” one crew member said. “It’s a Western. That’s kind of the point.” According to Sohinki, Costner didn’t need long to make up his mind. He gave the okay to let her go “about an hour” after she showed up.
“Kevin’s not a yeller,” Sohinki said. “He just looked at me and said, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ So I took care of it.”
Costner has been on a mission in recent years to make movies his way. His “Horizon” saga was built as a sweeping, old-fashioned frontier story, and he has said in interviews that he isn’t interested in following Hollywood’s trends. Crew members say the sets are relaxed, focused, and free of drama. That’s how he likes it.
Lawrence, meanwhile, has become one of Hollywood’s most outspoken voices on politics. She has criticized conservatives many times, and fans say her opinions have become a bigger part of her public image than her movies.
People close to the production say Lawrence was stunned by how fast it happened. She reportedly told a friend she had “never been treated like that” on a set.
Her supporters quickly came to her defense online. They called the firing petty and said an actor raising concerns about a script is part of the job. Some argued that Costner was making a political point at her expense.
Costner’s fans didn’t see it that way. They said he made it clear what kind of film he was making, and that anyone who signs on should know that going in.
“If you don’t like cowboys, don’t take the cowboy movie,” one fan wrote. The role has already been recast, according to people on set, and filming is back on schedule. Lawrence hasn’t commented publicly. Her name doesn’t appear on any upcoming projects. She’s insufferable and unemployed.