Whitney Cummings recalls Francis Ford Coppola’s humiliating gesture
Whitney Cummings auditioned for Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘critically panned ‘Megalopolis’
Whitney Cummings was left “traumatized” after a “humiliating” audition for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
“This was such a core trauma for me,” Cummings shared during her appearance on the Good For You podcast.
The Two Broke Girls co-creator said she spent days memorizing lines for the audition in vain. When she got there for the audition, the comedian noticed that something was off, with the process ultimately making her feel like she was being punked.
“Everyone is so quiet. There’s no vibe of, ‘We’re at an audition. Hey, what’s up? Hi, how are you? Nice to meet you,’” she recalled.
She continued: “It’s just so awkward. I go in, I’m like, ‘So, where do you want to start first?’ And he’s, like, ‘Oh no, no, we’re not going to do the scene.’ I was like, ‘OK, It’s three days of my life.’”
She revealed that The Godfather director asked actors to improvise: “He would just throw things at me.”
The prompts given to Cummings included a bit where she says goodbye to her son going off to war using an English accent.
She was also asked to improvise an Australian accent and confront her husband using that.
This made her feel like she was being punked: “Because I did the show Punk’d, I was like, if I’m being punked, this is actually genius. I started glazing over, and then he was, like, ‘That was great.’ I don’t know where I went. I just completely disassociated.”
“I am improvising my head off to just nothing,” she continued. “Why am I acting with him? He’s, like, ‘It’s going to be me and we’re going to improvise the scene.’ I’m, like, ‘But you don’t [improvise].’ Has anyone ever told you the truth since Apocalypse Now? Right? Has anyone told you the truth? No.”
The audition left Cummings “so embarrassed” with Coppola even giving her a signed copy of his new book: “He signed it in front of me as if I had shown up to an autograph signing as if I wanted [it]. Like, thank you. And then gave me a bottle of Francis Ford Coppola wine. It was just so humiliating — that’s the only [word] — and so confounding in that moment.”
Coppola wrote and directed the epic science fiction film Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight and more. The film was critically panned and became a box office flop, grossing only $13M with a budget over $120M.
