The 1982 movie scene that “disgusted” Harrison Ford: “I think he did it deliberately badly”
One of the least professional things an actor can do is phone in a performance, or worse, be actively bad on purpose. Still, Harrison Ford didn’t mind, and it sounds a lot like it was an act of quiet protest.
For the most part, the veteran star has never been accused of going through the motions, sleepwalking through a part, or rubbing his co-stars the wrong way, apart from the time he demanded one of the puppeteers be fired from Star Wars after he heard them badmouthing him on set.
He had his issues with Josh Hartnett on Hollywood Homicide and Brad Pitt on The Devil’s Own, too, but things never devolved into outright mud-slinging, even if there was some sniping between the respective parties. When you’re Harrison Ford, you don’t really have to do anything you don’t want to, but when you do end up doing something you don’t want to, you can play the producers at their own game.
It’s led to greatness before, with the erstwhile Han Solo famously improvising his “I know” response to Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia, but only after he’d won an argument with George Lucas. When similar pleas fell on deaf ears on another sci-fi classic, though, he took matters into his own hands.
While his stance has softened over the years, for a long time, Ford could barely bring himself to say a kind word about Blade Runner. It’s long since been established as one of the greatest movies ever made in its genre of choice, but because of the number of compromises he had to make, the leading man was never truly happy with his work, whether that was on set or in post-production.
His biggest issue by far was adding the unnecessary narration after the fact, but since he was contractually obligated to do it, he had no choice. As producer Michael Deeley recalled, it wasn’t a happy environment. “So, we do the voiceover, and Harrison Ford was so disgusted with having to do it that I think he did it deliberately badly,” he suggested. “But we did.”
It’s no secret that Blade Runner wasn’t the smoothest sailing of Ford’s career, and Deeley shared his belief that Scott’s directing style was a big part of it. “He really did feel that he couldn’t do the job without proper directing,” he opined. “I mean, he had Spielberg coddling him before; he’s very good at chatting up actors.”
On this occasion, “Ridley wouldn’t do that, and Harrison couldn’t bear it, and he thought the performance suffered as a result.” Given his reputation for being one of the grumpiest and most curmudgeonly deadpanners in Hollywood, it seems odd to accuse Ford of being an actor who needs to be indulged and pampered to deliver their best work, especially when the volume of injuries he’s suffered over the years would suggest that he can’t even coddle himself.
Still, Feeney was happy to share his theories over the star’s dismay with Blade Runner, and whether he hit the nail on the head or not, one thing that became abundantly clear was that he loathed that infernal voiceover.
