James McAvoy claims that his pivotal role in M Night Shyamalan’s Split was originally to be played by Joaquin Phoenix, but he allegedly quit two weeks before filming began.
In what’s beginning to look like a pattern, it’s been alleged that Joaquin Phoenix departed the production of M Night Shyamalan’s 2016 thriller Split – just two weeks before filming began. The story comes straight from James McAvoy, who ultimately played Kevin, the kidnapper with multiple personalities, in the finished film – and later reprised the role in 2019’s Glass.
Speaking on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Deadline), McAvoy said, “I think he [Phoenix] ditched it two weeks before they started shooting.”
The actor added that the short window between him replacing Phoenix and the start of the shoot left him with little time to perfect a complex character that essentially required 15 different performances in one movie.
“The script was well put together so a lot of it was pretty clear what I wanted to do straight away,” McAvoy said. “There were a couple of characters that took a little bit longer to find. Patricia came real quick, Dennis came real quick. Hedwig took a little while. It wasn’t until the read-through for the table read which I was really nervous for… I’m sitting there like, God, I’ve got to do all these 15 characters and be judged by everybody in the room, including Universal studio executives including Jason Blum, and I haven’t even found some of the characters.’”
The situation will probably sound familiar to director Todd Haynes, whose planned film noir – a “love story between two men set in the 1930s” – was derailed when Phoenix left the production just five days before shooting was due to begin.
Ridley Scott has also talked about a similar crisis during the production of his historical epic, Napoleon, in which Phoenix suddenly got cold feet about taking the title role a couple of weeks before filming was due to begin. The script was then hurriedly rewritten in order to keep Phoenix involved.
Phoenix hasn’t yet talked about the reasons behind his departure from Todd Haynes’ project, which left its production in tatters. When asked about it during the press conference for the upcoming Joker: Folie A Deux, he said, “If I do [say anything], I’ll just be sharing my opinion from my perspective, and the other creatives aren’t here to say their piece, and it just doesn’t feel like that would be right. I am not sure how that would be helpful. I don’t think I will.”
As for Split, Phoenix’s loss turned out to be McAvoy’s gain, with the actor receiving acclaim for his performance and the film as a whole making lots of money for Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. What might the thriller have looked like with Phoenix in the antagonist role? “He’s an amazing actor,” McAvoy said. “I think he’d give a very different performance to the one I did, but I think he’d give an incredible performance.”
McAvoy is currently promoting his latest intense thriller, Speak No Evil, which is in cinemas now.
