Quentin Tarantino admits to firing two A-list stars from Inglourious Basterds after ‘terrible’ table read

Quentin Tarantino has revealed that he sacked two major actresses from his hit 2009 film Inglourious Basterds.

The director, 63, opened up about the difficult casting process in Jay Glennie’s new book, The Making of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.

In the book, Tarantino admitted that he fired French A-lister Isabelle Huppert after she ‘didn’t show up’ to a table read, and then replaced her with Maggie Cheung.

‘So f**k it. I fired her. I mean, I love Isabelle Huppert — Heaven’s Gate and all that — but there were issues with her contract. It just kept stalling. And then not coming to the table read. Well, we cast Maggie instead,’ he said, per Variety.

Another actress who got the chop was Mélanie Laurent, who was ultimately rehired after begging Tarantino for another shot. 

The French starlet, who has won two César Awards, the French equivalent of an Oscar,  was dropped from the project following a ‘terrible’ table read, according to People.

She then called the Pulp Fiction filmmaker back and asked to try again, and he agreed as long as she agreed to do three days of rehearsals with him. 

Laurent nailed it on her second try and got her job back as Shosanna Dreyfus, the female lead of the film. 

‘Let me just go on the record for everybody to know: I love Melanie,’ Tarantino said. 

‘The fact of the matter is, if we were not talking about the making of Inglourious Basterds, I would never think about the table read again for the simple reason Mélanie is my Shosanna. She did a wonderful job.’

Released in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim, Inglourious Basterds grossed over $320 million to become one of Tarantino’s highest-grossing films. 

It picked up eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.  

Christoph Waltz ended up winning Best Supporting Actor for his role as the villainous Hans Landa.

Inglourious Basterds follows two separate, converging missions to assassinate the top leadership of Nazi Germany in a Paris cinema.

In addition to Waltz, it stars Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender and Diane Kruger.

Although Huppert was dropped from the project, the French actress was later nominated for Best Actress at the 2017 Academy Awards for her role in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle.

Back in June, Tarantino slammed Hollywood as a ‘flavorless sausage factory’ before revealing the one surprising film he has loved in the past six years.

The 63-year-old director, who has won two Oscars among his roster of projects, shared his thoughts in a fiery essay for Sight & Sound Magazine.

He wrote that he finds it ‘almost impossible’ to watch a movie nowadays but named the one 2026 project that kept him captivated from beginning to end: The Rip.

The crime thriller dropped on Netflix earlier this year in January with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in the lead roles.

‘A suspenseful new movie has come out that did grab me and held me for its entire duration,’ Tarantino wrote.

‘The film is an exciting cop thriller with a novel premise that manages to deliver the goods in really clever ways.’ 

He further explained that ‘the whole package worked’ including director Joe Carnahan, the screenplay and also ‘the splendid cast.’ 

Elsewhere in his essay for Sight & Sound Magazine, the filmmaker called out modern Hollywood.

‘Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers or just plain stupid s*** usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavorless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood,’ Tarantino said.

He added that ‘the entire concept of what is a movie is more inclined to inspire contempt in me than generosity. 

‘Which is fair enough, because by comparison the movies of the last six years make the 80s seem like the 30s.’

Tarantino did name a few other movie titles that he has enjoyed in recent years such as West Side Story (2021) starring Rachel Zegler and Ansel Elgort.

He also penned that he liked Kevin Costner’s Western epics Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 1 and 2, which released in 2024.

Aside from The Rip, the star said that not much else has ‘really held me in its grip and swept me away to the magical land of enjoyment that I used to visit regularly and was the reason I loved movies above all other artforms.

‘These days I’d rather read a book,’ Tarantino added.