If Shia LaBeouf had played the lead in Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer’s love romance “Call Me By Your Name,” the film would have been quite different.
The 35-year-old former Disney Channel star was in talks to play Hammer’s character Oliver, who was Chalamet’s older boyfriend.
James Ivory, the Oscar-winning writer and producer of the 2017 film “Solid Ivory,” revealed that LaBeouf was approached first to portray the role. Ivory said he was worried about LaBeouf’s casting because he couldn’t imagine the “Fury” actor enjoying “an academic writing about the Greek philosopher Heraclitus” in sections published in GQ Wednesday.
“Shia came to read for us in New York with Timothée Chalamet, and [director Luca Guadagnino] and I were blown away,” Ivory said. “The two teenage performers did a fantastic job reading; they made a very realistic hot couple.”
Following some negative news, Ivory stated that LaBeouf was “dropped” from the picture. LaBeouf was arrested in Georgia in 2017 for public intoxication and disorderly behavior and has been accused of sexual harassment by several women, including FKA Twigs and singer-songwriter Sia.
After some negative news about his approach, the actor was supposedly “pulled” from the film. The filmmaker then disclosed that he had been fired as director and that Guadagnino would instead helm the film solo.
“The last time I saw Luca was in New York, before [filming] started when I still thought I was co-directing with him; we joked about what would happen if we got into a dispute on set, and laughed about it,” he wrote. “After the Cannes Film Festival in May, where the repaired ‘Howards End’ was to be exhibited, I made plans to go to Crema. After that, I was dumped.”
“I was never informed why I was dropped, by Luca or anybody else: it was presented in a ‘it has been decided that…’ kind of way,” he stated.
On November 2nd, “Solid Ivory” was released.