How Quickly Did Joaquin Phoenix Split Up With Split?

At least he’s consistent? Joaquin Phoenix is once again making headlines for allegedly leaving a movie on short notice. In a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, James McAvoy recounted the timeline of him replacing Phoenix as the lead in M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Split. We’ve known for a while that Phoenix left the project abruptly; The Guardian reported in 2017 that Phoenix had dropped out “at the 11th hour.” But what does that really mean? “I think he ditched it two weeks before they started shooting,” McAvoy told Horowitz. “It was really last minute. I had two weeks.” (Hey, it could’ve been worse — Phoenix reportedly quit a Todd Haynes gay romance movie just five days before filming was scheduled to start this year.)

Split follows a man with dissociative identity disorder. Given the amount of time McAvoy had to prepare, he was understandably nervous for the first table read. “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 all that … and I haven’t even found some of the characters,” he recalled. “It just came on really, really quick.” Still, McAvoy doesn’t seem too disappointed with the way things went down. Noting that it can keep an actor from overthinking, he suggested, “Sometimes coming in last minute is the best way.” Hmm … [in our best PR voice] maybe Phoenix was just trying to help!

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