Everyone has something they won’t budge on! And for Adam Driver, listening to clips of himself acting or singing is completely non-negotiable!
The 36-year-old is making headlines after he walked out of a recent interview with NPR‘s Fresh Air after radio show host Terry Gross played a snippet of the star’s performance in Netflix‘s Marriage Story. We know this might come off as a major diva moment, but it turns out there’s more to this story than meets the eye!
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The thespian is in the middle of promoting a few of his latest movies, including the recent installment of Disney‘s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, and the aforementioned romantic drama in which he stars opposite Scarlett Johansson.
According to a statement from NPR shared by The Daily Beast, Adam was invited to the show to talk about the buzzworthy, Noah Baumbach-directed film on December 10, but things turned sour after a 20-second clip of him singing a musical arrangement called Company was played.
A source on the show’s production team shared they were well aware of the star’s distaste for hearing or watching recordings of his work, thanks to the way Driver responded to a similar scenario the last time he did an interview with FA back in 2015.
The staffers reportedly encouraged Driver to remove his headphones during that specific part of their segment. Instead, the actor decided to completely ditch the rest of the taped conversation and left the outlet’s New York studios where his portion of the interview was being recorded. Gross, on the other hand, was delivering questions from the show’s headquarters in Philadelphia.
Fresh Air‘s executive producer Danny Miller expressed disappointment in the star’s decision to leave in a statement that read:
“We don’t really understand why he left. We were looking forward to the interview—Terry thinks he’s a terrific actor, he was a great guest when he was on [Fresh Air] in 2015—so we were disappointed that we didn’t have a new interview to share with our listeners about Marriage Story.”
Artists are notoriously sensitive about their craft, with some more particular than others. Driver appears to fall into the latter category as evidenced by his behavior on NPR.
However, as we mentioned earlier, this isn’t the first time he’s expressed a distaste for this part of his job.
In that 2015 sit-down with Gross, the Girls actor previously admitted:
“I don’t want to hear the bad acting that probably was happening during that clip.”
When asked why it bugged him so much, the star explained:
“Yeah, no, I’ve watched myself or listened to myself before, then always hate it. And then wish I could change it, but you can’t. And I think I have, like, a tendency to try to make things better or drive myself and the other people around me crazy with the things I wanted to change or I wish I could change.”
If that reasoning isn’t enough, consider the New Yorker profile in October 2019 where writer Michael Schulman described Driver’s reluctance to watch himself as a “phobia.” The actor himself recalled feeling nauseous during a première of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and hiding out in a green room during a screening of BlacKkKlansmen.
At first glance, one might brush this off as a really entitled or spoiled brat-like response, but it also sounds like this is something that runs deep for Adam. Should interviewers be more sensitive to his requests and omit clips altogether when speaking to him? Especially when he previously brought up to the same program about his distaste for it??
Perezcious readers, where do YOU stand on all of this? Sound OFF with your thoughts in the comments!
[Image via WENN/Avalon]
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