Harrison Ford discusses his conflicts with Brad Pitt during the making of THE DEVIL’S OWN

As you may have heard, there was a little behind-the-scenes drama Harrison Ford AND Brad Pitt during the production of the 1997 film The devil is right. The two actors both had big egos and had different visions for the film which ultimately led to a clash of conflicts.

During a recent interview with Esquire, Ford opened up about his conflicts with Pitt:

“First of all, I admire Brad. I think he’s a wonderful actor. He is really a good boy. But we couldn’t agree on a director until we got to Alan Pakula, who I’d worked with before but Brad hadn’t.

The film follows Irish Republican Army (IRA) member Rory Devaney (Pitt) as he travels to New York City under the alias Francis Austin McGuire to buy weapons for his cause. However, he unintentionally becomes the host of Tom O’Meara (Ford), an upstanding Irish-American cop. As their friendship develops, O’Meara gradually realizes the truth about Devaney’s identity and his involvement in illegal activities. The story delves into the moral complexities faced by O’Meara as he struggles with loyalty, duty and personal integrity.

Ford went on to say that he wanted to have a more complex storyline for his character in the film, and this is a point during development where tension may have kicked in. He explained:

“Brad had this complicated nature, and I wanted a complication on my side so that it wasn’t just a battle between good and evil. And that’s when I came up with the miss shot thing.

Ford is referring to the part of the story where his character witnesses his partner’s bad shooting in the field, and working that subplot into the film was apparently difficult because it resulted in a script that Pitt and Ford couldn’t agree on. . The actor continued:

“I worked with a writer, but suddenly we were shooting and we didn’t have a script that Brad and I agreed on. Each of us had different ideas about it.”

After all these years, Ford now blames himself for the friction with Pitt, saying:

“I get why he wanted to stick with his point of view, and I wanted to stick with my point of view — or was imposing my point of view, and it’s fair to say that’s what Brad felt. It was complicated. I really like the movie. Very.”

The Devil’s Own is a film I haven’t seen in a long time. I remember not really liking it when I first saw it, but I was a teenager at the time. This actually might be a movie worth revisiting.