Courtney Love didn’t plan to mention Brad Pitt during that juicy interview this week, but she’s explaining now why she did it.
Love told Maron that she had originally been cast in the 1999 David Fincher movie Fight Club, to play the role of Marla that eventually went to Helena Bonham Carter. Love said that she’d been fired, however, after turning down Pitt and director Gus Van Sant’s request at the same time to make a movie about her late husband, Kurt Cobain. Pitt had planned to play the Nirvana frontman, who died by suicide at 27 in 1994.
On Friday, Love clarified her comments in a lengthy statement:
“Hi. Regarding a story I told on the @marcmaron #wtf podcast. A story I was never going to tell. Brad pushed me a bridge too far. I don’t like the way he does business or wields his power. It’s a simple fact, and it started during the production of Fight Club.
“I understand how much of a game of roulette casting is. I am not here 22 years later bitching about losing a part playing someone’s side piece in a movie.
“On the podcast, I recount the day Brad & Gus Van Sant called me from lunch and tried to blackmail me over my role, for the rights to a film about Kurt. I lost my shit on them, and by 7pm I was fired from Fight Club. Every word of this is factual. This was always a secret that I was fine keeping.
“The point,” Love continued, “is Brad kept on stalking me about Kurt. With all this resentment in our history, one might ask why I took yet another pitch for Kurt’s film from Brad after all these years? It’s because I’m in recovery. And resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.
In her talk with Maron, Love said she had last said no to a Pitt project on Cobain, whom she married in 1992, in 2020. She addressed that conversation in her new post.
Finally, Love complimented Bonham Carter’s performance.
