Jared Leto proves to be insufferable on set once again
The actor’s bathroom breaks while filming ‘Morbius’ turned into a whole production of their own, just so he could stay in character.
In case it still isn’t absolutely clear how insufferable it is to work with Jared Leto, apparently he’s now requiring people to escort him to the bathroom. In an interview with Uproxx, the director of Leto’s disastrous new film Morbius confirmed a story that the star — notorious for being an unnecessarily over-the-top method actor, among other disturbing claims — committed so fully to his role of the titular vampire hero, that film crew had to push him to and from the bathroom in a wheelchair every time he needed to relieve himself.
“I heard a story about filming and I want to see if this is true,” Uproxx’s Mike Ryan said to director Daniel Espinosa. “Someone told me that Jared Leto was so committed to playing Michael Morbius that even when he had to go to the bathroom, he would use his crutches and slowly limp to get to the bathroom. But it was taking so long between for pee breaks, that a deal was made with him to get him a wheelchair so someone could wheel him there quicker and he agreed to that. Is this true?”
“Yes,” Espinosa confirmed tersely. He explained that Leto felt he needed to mimic and fully embody his character, who lived with chronic pain as a result of a specific blood condition. “I think that what Jared thinks, what Jared believes, is that somehow the pain of those movements, even when he was playing normal Michael Morbius, he needed, because he’s been having this pain his whole life,” Espinosa said. “Even though, as he’s alive and strong, it has to be a difference. Hey, man, it’s people’s processes.”
Espinosa added a general defense of actors as people who need to be weirdos in order to do their job. “I think it’s really mysterious, what they do,” the director said. “Almost all actors, in general, have their own reputation of being an interesting person how he works with their characters. I think that all of them have these traits. If you want a completely normal person that does only things that you understand, then you’re in the wrong business. Because what’s different is what makes them tick.”
Leto, though, has a reputation that extends far beyond the typical method actor archetype: sending dead animals to his co-stars, starting what his own band calls a cult with him serving as apparent savior figure, and allegedly targeting underage girls as a sexual predator.
Following the opening of Morbius, many people have dug up these claims and wondered why such persistent rumors haven’t seemed to impact Leto’s career.
Some have pointed out a disconcerting pattern, wherein allegations against rapists like Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey were also open secrets that were both repeatedly referenced and ignored by Hollywood for decades — until public consensus forced them to finally be blacklisted (and prosecuted). Even after #MeToo, why are the similarly persistent whispers against Leto being disregarded by the powers-that-be in the same way?
At the very least, the abysmal reviews for Morbius just might bring us closer to a world without Leto continuing to exist as a star — or at least, one can dream.
