The co-star who hated Arnold Schwarzenegger the most: “I haven’t forgiven him”
When you get to be as famous as Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can basically work with whoever you want. His list of notable collaborators is as long as his biceps are large. Throw a dart at a Hollywood Who’s Who, and chances are you’ll hit someone who has an on-set story about the former Mr Universe.
One actor you don’t readily associate with the ‘Austrian Oak’ is Miriam Margolyes. The foul-mouthed sensation starred alongside Arnie in End of Days, an utterly bonkers movie made during a particularly lucrative period of his career.
Schwarzenegger plays a New York cop who ends up battling the forces of hell when he discovers a plot to conceive the Antichrist. Margolyes plays a demonic carer secretly raising the intended bride of Satan. She and Arnie actually have a fight scene, which is one of the strangest things you’ll ever see in your life.
Working with a star of the calibre of Schwarzenegger is a career highlight for most people. Not Miriam. Never one to keep things to herself, she has publicly called out the former ‘Governator’ multiple times, including in a 2022 interview with the I’ve Got News For You podcast.
“He was actually quite rude,” she claimed. “He farted in my face. Now, I fart, of course I do – but I don’t fart in people’s faces. He did it deliberately, right in my face. I was playing Satan’s sister, and he was killing me, so he had me in a position where I couldn’t escape and was lying on the floor. And he just farted. It wasn’t on film, it was in one of the pauses, but I haven’t forgiven him for it.”
Margolyes’ accusations go much further than a bit of flatulence. She claims that Schwarzenegger was “awfully gropey with women” on set, alleging that he left her alone because he “didn’t fancy me”. Various publications reached out to Schwarzenegger for comment, but heard nothing back. He’s been famously absent from this one-sided feud, possibly deciding that engaging in a war of words with an old British lady most famous for swearing on podcasts probably wasn’t a good use of his time.
If Arnie was as much of a “pig of a man” as Margolyes claims he was during this period, then karma might have caught up with him. End of Days is regarded as one of the lowest points of his career in terms of audience reception.
It was one of a string of action flops that premiered around this time that prompted commentators to speculate if the former king of the genre had lost his touch. He was making a lot of bad business decisions, turning down hits like The Rock in favour of things like this or the unfortunate Collateral Damage.
Arnie’s career falling apart because he farted in a woman’s face sounds far-fetched, but no more so than the movie on which the alleged incident took place. The film ends with Schwarzenegger’s character possessed by the devil and forced to impale himself to save the day. Now that’s far-fetched.
