To be or not to be inShakespeare in Love, that was the question forJulia Roberts.
“I’m not suggesting she was deliberately sabotaging, but it was a disaster nonetheless.
After he was gone, I turned to Julia, awaiting her reaction.
Julia Roberts; Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Shakespeare in Love’.Presley Ann/Getty Images; Everett Collection
‘He isn’t funny’ is all she said.”
The following two weeks of casting went “just as badly,” Zwick continues.
Finally, Zwick says Roberts agreed to read withPaul McGann.
Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow in ‘Shakespeare in Love’.Miramax
“But once she began to say the words, something was wrong.
There was no magic.
The problem wasn’t the script.
But I would never get to talk her off the ledge.
The next morning when I called her room, I was told she had checked out.”
“I’ve never spoken to Julia again,” Zwick writes.
“I bear her no ill will,” he adds of Roberts.
“She was a frightened 24-year-old.
And with it my dreams of grandeur.”
Reps for Roberts didn’t respond to EW’s request for comment.
Paltrow ultimately starred in the film opposite Fiennes' actor brotherJoseph Fiennes.
