The disgraced director Rebecca Ferguson called a “misogynistic pig”: “We were all aware”
One of Hollywood’s great unanswered mysteries, at least among the chronically online, is the identity of the unnamed and “insecure” co-star called out by Rebecca Ferguson for screaming at her on set.
While she hasn’t divulged any details, other than confirming that it wasn’t Dwayne Johnson or Hugh Jackman, and the actor is keeping her lips sealed. However, she didn’t have any problems with naming another industry figure who wasn’t the nicest to be around, which is putting it lightly.
One of the most unusual things about Ferguson’s career is that even though she’s been acting since the late 1990s, when she made her professional debut as a cast member of the Swedish soap opera, Nya tider, she’s never appeared in an independent film, or even a particularly inexpensive one.
All of her credits since she set her sights on cracking America have either been big-budget blockbusters, effects-heavy genre films, studio-backed prestige pictures, or starry ensemble pieces. As a result, she’s rubbed shoulders with some heavy hitters on either side of the camera, and not all of them have made a good impression.
Ferguson’s first Stateside production saw her playing Ergenia opposite the aforementioned Johnson in 2014’s Hercules, a passion project for ‘The Rock’ that didn’t make enough of a splash at the box office to warrant the sequels that the actor was keen on. The whole thing was a bit of a bust, really, and as much as the Doctor Sleep villain enjoyed making it, there was one person she couldn’t stand.
“The cast was phenomenal; Dwayne and Rufus Sewell, and John Hurt and Ian McShane,” she recalled to The Independent. “The fact that it was all led by a misogynistic pig named Brett Ratner? That’s something else.” She wasn’t personally victimised, but she saw enough to learn a lesson about Hollywood.
“What I realised was how this world is set up,” she explained. “It was clear to me that you are very much alone on these sets, and the people who should have your back won’t necessarily have your back. When something uncomfortable happened, you didn’t have the support of the producers. It was an unsteady ground that shook me very much. I wasn’t personally ill-treated, but I saw things. I was aware. We were all aware.”
Hercules remains the last feature that Ratner directed, with multiple women accusing the filmmaker of sexual assault and harassment in 2017, while Elliot Page shared that he’d deliberately outed the then-teenager before shooting X-Men: The Last Stand, which was corroborated by co-star Anna Paquin.
He was subsequently dumped from his lucrative first-look producing deal with Warner Bros, but because we live in the most fucked up timeline imaginable, the president of the United States may have offered Ratner a lifeline to salvage his career, due to Donald Trump’s bizarre obsession with making Rush Hour 4 a reality.
