REPLACING SPACEY
The incredible story of how director Ridley Scott removed Kevin Spacey from his film and reshot it in nine days
The new film All The Money In The World, which has just arrived in UK cinemas, tells an extraordinary true story. It’s about how 16-year-old Paul Getty, the grandson of the then-richest man in the world, John Paul Getty, was kidnapped in Rome in 1973 and a ransom of $17m placed on his head. But his grandfather refused point blank to send the money, despite pleas from the boy’s parents.
And the making of the movie has its own incredible true story, too. It was all filmed, edited, and ready to be released in the US by the crucial Christmas deadline for Oscar eligibility, when its key star Kevin Spacey, who played John Paul Getty, was suddenly embroiled in a huge sex-abuse scandal. So the film’s director Ridley Scott decided to recast the role and reshoot all of Spacey’s scenes. In nine days.
“I ENJOYA BIT OF STRESS”
“When I heard about this, I realised there was no way we could go ahead with the film as it was. It would actually affect us badly,” explained Scott, referring to the Spacey revelations, which included allegations he assaulted a 14-year-old boy. He was right, of course – the public would have little appetite for a film with a disgraced star in such a key role, yet it’s unheard of for a major movie to be recast and reshot mere weeks before its release. But Ridley Scott, who’s now 80 years old, isn’t one to shirk a challenge. The director of such classics as Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise, who makes at least one major movie per year, told American GQ, “I enjoy a bit of stress. It was hard at first. I had to say to my producers, ‘Listen, I can recast this. We can get this together. We can go at the same date.’”
THE FIRST CHOICE
The brilliant irony is that Scott had already asked veteran actor Christopher Plummer, 88, to take the Spacey role and Plummer was in fact the director’s first choice. But when the film was originally cast, studio Sony thought Spacey (who’s 58, but was made to look older with make-up and prosthetics) was a bigger name. That decision ended up costing them an estimated $10m for the reshoots.
Within hours of the Spacey allegations hitting the news, Scott was making calls to secure the same filming locations he had used, although he did have to resort to “green screen” special effects for some key shots. When Plummer agreed to the challenge of replacing Spacey, it was all go. “There were a lot of dates and phone calls, which is really the stressful stuff,” explained Scott. “Once I’ve got that, I move like lightning. It’s pretty straightforward. I did
22 scenes in nine days”. And those 22 scenes happen to feature Spacey/plummer’s character in locations as far and wide as an English country mansion, Rome, and in one epic sequence, the Jordanian desert.
DOING IT FOR FREE
Perhaps the greatest tribute to Scott’s powers of persuasion is that lead stars of the film, Michelle Williams and Mark Wahlberg, who each shot myriad scenes with Spacey, agreed to do all the reshoots for free. “I adore [Ridley],” Williams has said. “I hated that this man’s time and expertise and gentlemanliness were going to kind of be for nought. So, when I got the phone call about the change of plans, I was thrilled.” As for Marky Mark, he faced a unique challenge. “My whole world was just kind of upside-down, because I was shooting another movie,” he’s said. “I was 30lbs lighter, I had a beard… It was definitely a crazy set of circumstances.”
Yet in the finished movie, the whole thing feels absolutely seamless. Maybe one day we’ll get a film telling the incredible true story of how they replaced Spacey…