Credit: New Line CinemaJohnny Depp is currently facing new allegations of aggressive misbehavior, this time toward a co-star of the cocaine crime thriller Blow (2001). This is certainly not helping the controversial actor’s tarnished public image, but an important crew member of the film has come out to dispute the allegations.
Blow starred Johnny Depp as George Jung, a real-life drug trafficker who was a critical part of the 1980s explosion of cocaine in the United States. The film, directed by Ted Demme and written by David McKenna and Nick Cassavetes from Bruce Porter’s Blow: How a Small Town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellín Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All (1993), followed years of Jung’s life and co-starred Penelope Cruz in one of her early English-language roles.
The film was a moderate commercial success and is a well-regarded entry in Johnny Depp’s pre-Pirates of the Caribbean career when he focused on mid-budget dramas and art films from critically acclaimed directors like Terry Gilliam and Jim Jarmusch. Once Captain Jack Sparrow came around, Depp’s trajectory as a Hollywood movie star vastly changed.
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Blow co-star Lola Glaudini says that her experience with Johnny Depp on set was one of borderline verbal abuse. In a January episode of the Powerful Truth Angels podcast, Glaudini stated that Ted Demme had instructed her to “burst out laughing” during one of Depp’s takes, and that the star had blown up at her.
According to Glaudini, “Ted Demme comes over to me, and he’s like, ‘Ok Lola, when Johnny Depp says this certain word, I want you to burst out laughing like she just told you the funniest thing over here.’ We’re in the background, the deep background, right?”
However, things seemed to go quickly awry. Glaudini told the podcast, “[Depp] says his monologue and I go haha and Johnny Depp walks over to me, sticks his finger in my face – and I’m in a bikini on the ground like this – and he comes over and he goes, ‘Who the f*** do you think you are? Who the f*** do you think you are? Shut the f*** up. I’m out here, and I’m trying to f-ing say my lines, and you’re out f-ing pulling focus. You fing idiot. Oh, now, oh now it’s not so funny? Now you can shut up? Now you can f-ing shut the f*** up? The quiet that you are right now, that’s how you f***ing stay.’”
Glaudini went on to say that Johnny Depp later gave her a “non-apology” and blamed the incident on his attempts to perform a “Boston accent,” but clearly the damage was done. She said, “This was my first studio movie, I’ve just done indie movies until then. And I have the star who I have idolized, who I am so excited to work with, reamed me in my face,” she expressed. “The only thing I have going through my head is, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.’”
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This story becomes more complicated, however. Samuel Sarkar, a sound technician on Blow, is contradicting the actress, saying that he was monitoring the set and that there was no evidence of a verbal blowup as described (per Variety).
Sarkar said in a statement, “As a sound person, you’re constantly listening to what is going on on set, listening for noises, listening for chatter. In fact, specifically, I would listen to Johnny’s audio to check for interference, both during rehearsals and during the take. I never heard anything like that — and that would have been a remarkable event.”
This makes the situation far murkier, especially as Johnny Depp is only lately beginning to emerge from years of legal issues over claims of domestic abuse from his former spouse, Amber Heard. We will continue to update this story with further information.
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