“He’ll forgive me”: When Ridley Scott called Harrison Ford “the biggest pain in the arse”
As one of the biggest names in global pop culture, thanks to his Star Wars-assisted meteoric rise to fame, Harrison Ford has fans all over the world.
Of course, it’s not just Star Wars that’s cemented his legacy as a true Hollywood icon – his unforgettable turns in fan favourites like the Indiana Jones films played a massive part too. And he’s not slowed down in recent years either, earning critical praise for newer work like the Apple TV series Shrinking.
However, despite all the love that he usually gets, there’s one filmmaker who couldn’t fucking stand the actor at all when they worked together on a movie that would become a definitive part of both of their respective filmographies. To those who are familiar with Ford’s trajectory, it should come as no surprise that the director in question is none other than Ridley Scott.
The two of them collaborated on one of the most important works from the 1980s – Blade Runner, an interesting adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel that was already complex enough to begin with. While some hardcore sci-fi fans maintain that Scott couldn’t completely capture the scale and philosophical depth of Dick’s literary masterpiece, the film still stands on its own merit due to the unforgettable visual presentation of a neon-drenched cyberpunk world, significantly influencing the future of the genre.
During a conversation with the BBC, Scott was directly asked, “Who’s the biggest pain in the arse you’ve ever worked with?”. Given his track record with the media and the controversies he finds himself in, one has to think that this is a deliberate shitstirring attempt, but Scott wasted no time in naming Ford as a big obstacle he had to overcome during the production of Blade Runner.
Balancing his answer with some praise for the actor, Scott said: “He’ll forgive me because now I get on with him – but it’s got to be Harrison [Ford]. Now he’s become charming. But he knows a lot, that’s the problem. When we worked together, it was my first film up, and I was the new kid on the block. But we made a good movie.”
It wasn’t smooth sailing for Harrison either, who found it extremely hard to collaborate with an obtuse Scott. The filmmaker was up in arms about Hollywood’s union directives, and since he wasn’t allowed to handle the camera during the production, he intentionally set up a separate video booth for himself in order to create an isolated space, which didn’t impress Ford, who was looking for active guidance about the emotional framework of the character.
Talking about how demanding the shoot was, Ford complained, “It was a long slog. I didn’t really find it that physically difficult. I thought it was mentally difficult… I felt that the audience needed to have someone on-screen that they could emotionally relate to as though they were a human being.”
These hostilities between Ford and Scott also played a role when it came to assigning the director’s job for the sequel, Blade Runner 2049. It was the actor who ultimately returned to add a modern masterpiece to his credits, straight from the mind of a contemporary pioneer – Denis Villeneuve.
