“His behaviour was shocking”: the actor who made a lifelong enemy of Burt Reynolds
In 1988, Burt Reynolds starred in Switching Channels, a lighthearted comedy about a TV news chief resorting to trickery to keep his best anchorwoman—and ex-wife—on the job long enough to cover a big story, rather than quitting to marry a dull businessman. Christopher Reeve took on the role of the preened, hapless love rival to Reynolds’ newsman, while one of the ’80s most celebrated leading ladies played Reynolds’ fiery ex. However, behind the scenes, the production was far from smooth. Reeve often found himself playing referee as the two stars bickered incessantly, their feud so heated that even 30 years later, they were still trading barbs about each other.
When Reynolds was contacted at the eleventh hour about Switching Channels, the film’s original leading man had been forced to drop out. He didn’t have much going on at the time, amusingly telling The Globe and Mail in 1987, “I wasn’t doing anything other than sitting around mulling over the lint in my belly button.” He was also a fan of the director Ted Kotcheff’s previous film North Dallas Forty, and loved the screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s that the film was emulating. So, the Hollywood legend figured he’d give it a shot – after all, what’s the worst that could happen?
Unfortunately for the entire production, though, the film’s leading lady, Kathleen Turner, had her heart set on her original co-star. In 2018, she told Watch What Happens host Andy Cohen, “I was supposed to do the film with Michael Caine. Good choice, right? Well, Michael Caine got caught on Jaws 4 – the shark kept breaking down – and so I was pregnant, and I had a stop date, but he did not.”
Turner claimed Kotcheff shot as much of the film as he could without a star while the studio scrambled to hire someone. When Reynolds came on board, though, Turner’s dismissive take was, “Then finally the producer went and hired Burt Whatshisface.”
From day one, Reynolds and Turner clashed, making the set uncomfortable for everyone. In 2018, Turner claimed to Vulture that the chauvinist Reynolds reduced her to tears on that first day, “He said something about not taking second place to a woman. His behaviour was shocking. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t someone’s equal. I left the room sobbing.” She phoned her husband and told him she didn’t know what to do. He was able to talk her off the ledge, though, and encouraged her to do the job to the best of her ability.
Turner claimed that the atmosphere on set then turned hostile because crew members began taking sides: Team Reynolds or Team Turner. In his memoir Still Me, Reeve became the man tasked with trying to find a middle ground between the stars – even calling himself the “referee” in the situation. It made the movie miserable for him, too, as it was tense on set, and he also felt he “made a fool of himself” with the character. To add insult to injury, he shared Turner’s desire to work with Caine, who he’d gotten on so well with when they made Deathtrap together six years earlier, so perhaps Reynolds would always seem like second best.
Ultimately, Turner believed she was able to put any ill feelings aside and give a good performance. In her opinion, though, Reynolds couldn’t do the same. Indeed, the fact that both her male co-stars were nominated for Golden Raspberry awards, but she wasn’t, perhaps lends some credence to that theory.
While Reynolds hasn’t been as vocal as Turner about the awful experience of making Switching Channels, he did hint at it once. During an appearance on Watch What Happens, the same show where Turner aired her grievances with him, he was asked, “Who was the most overrated actor of the 1970s and 1980s?”
The Boogie Nights icon pondered the question briefly, then simply replied, “Kathleen Turner”.
