The actor who hated working with the “horrid” Steve Martin: “Unlovely and unapologetic”
In the 1970s, the American comedy scene was a debauched hellscape of drugs and egos, with stand-up coming into its own, and the sheer volume of talent roaming the scene was staggering, which saw Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin in their heyday.
Saturday Night Live was finding its feet with a crop of irrepressible talent, including Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, and the greatest of them all, John Belushi, but even amongst such strong competition, Steve Martin was one of the most famous stand-ups of the era, and he managed to leverage that success into a decades-long film career.
It has come to my attention that some people (especially in the UK, it seems) do not think that Steve Martin is funny, which is false, for not only can the man play the banjo like he’s the second coming of Snuffy Jenkins, but he can do so while delivering a comedy routine that will (and I use that word with utmost confidence) make you laugh until your face hurts. You may wish to confirm this by listening to his albums Let’s Get Small or A Wild and Crazy Guy.
Like Robin Williams, Martin also proved early on that he had a knack for eliciting other displays of emotion, such as heart-achy tears, with movies like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Parenthood, but unlike most of his contemporaries, he didn’t seem to leave a trail of cocaine-fuelled destruction in his wake. On the whole, he seems like a pretty mellow guy who loved doing magic tricks, playing bluegrass, and worshipping at the altar of fine art, but one co-star had a different take altogether.
In 2023, Miriam Margolyes, who is perhaps best known for playing Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter franchise, released a memoir in which she described the Only Murders in the Building star as “undeniably brilliant, but horrid”. They worked together on the 1986 musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors, in which Martin played a sadistic dentist, and Margolyes played his nurse and secretary, who he gleefully abuses, and she had a pretty ugly story to tell.
Their musical number, ‘Dentist!’ called for Martin’s character to punch her and slam her in the face with doors, and as Margolyes remembered it, the comedian chose a cinema verité approach. “I was hit all day by doors opening in my face,” she recalled, “Repeatedly punched, slapped and knocked down by an unlovely and unapologetic Steve Martin.”
Not surprisingly, the former stand-up was not amused by these assertions and released a lengthy statement in which he asserted that the scene had been meticulously choreographed and professionally executed, even denying (via Deadline) that there had been any physical contact “accidental or otherwise” between the two of them.
To back up his version of events, he pointed out that the scene had been arranged and supervised by the director, Frank Oz, and a stunt coordinator, and had been observed by a camera crew, script supervisor, and multiple extras. He even included a statement in which Oz expressed puzzlement over Margolyes’s claims and insisted that Martin had been “professional and respectful of everyone” on all four of the movies they made together.
Martin isn’t the only star to be the subject of Margolyes’s ruthlessly unfiltered commentary, having become an interview favourite in recent years for her willingness to say potentially too much about nearly everything. In 2022, for example, she claimed that Arnold Schwarzenegger deliberately farted in her face during the filming of End of Days, a tidbit that no one needed to hear but which, to be honest, we’re all grateful to have heard anyway.
