The recent revelations about Quentin Tarantino strangling Uma Thurman on the set of Kill Bill has caused a similar incident to resurface from the director’s past — when he choked Diane Kruger on Inglourious Basterds.
Tarantino has been feeling the heat ever since Uma shared details of a life-threatening crash and the injuries she suffered for a New York Times article over the weekend. The same piece revealed he asked to choke her for a movie scene.
Since then, a 2013 interview with Graham Norton has resurfaced, in which the director was asked about strangling Diane Kruger in a similar fashion.
Accusations: A 2013 interview with Graham Norton has resurfaced, in which the director was asked about strangling Diane Kruger in a similar fashion to Uma Thurman
He explained: ‘What I said to Diane is, “I’m going to be the hands, and I’m going to just strangle you, all right? I’m going to cut off your air, for just a little bit of time’
No drama: Diane Kruger has since come out to defend Tarantino posting on Instagram today that working with him was ‘pure joy’
In the clip, the director explains the situation to the chat show host and his guests, James McEvoy and Alan Davies, which he tells like a comedic anecdote.
He explained: ‘Whenever you do a close-up of somebody being strangled in a film, I never buy it, because when somebody’s actually being strangled there’s a thing that happens to their face — they turn a certain color and their veins pop out.
‘What I said to Diane is, “I’m going to be the hands, and I’m going to just strangle you, all right? I’m going to cut off your air, for just a little bit of time, we’re going to see the reaction in your face, and then we’ll cut, okay?”‘ adding that ‘she trusted him’.
Diane also personally talked about the incident in a 2009 interview with Parade magazine, in which she revealed Tarantino thought actor Christopher Waltz, whose character was the person strangling her in the movie, wouldn’t be capable of doing a good job.
She recalled him telling her: ‘I know exactly what I need, and I think I should just do it.’
She said: ‘I have to say it was very strange being strangled by the director.’
Diane has since come out to defend Tarantino, posting on Instagram today, Tuesday, February 6, that working with him was ‘pure joy’.
‘In light of the recent allegations made by Uma Thurman against Harvey Weinstein and her terrifying work experience on Kill Bill, my name has been mentioned in numerous articles in regards to the choking scene in Inglourious Basterds,’ she wrote.
‘This is an important moment in time and my heart goes out to Uma and anyone who has ever been the victim of sexual assault and abuse. I stand with you.
‘For the record however, I would like to say that my work experience with Quentin Tarantino was pure joy. He treated me with utter respect and never abused his power or forced me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.’
In a subsequent interview with Deadline about the New York Times piece, Tarantino explained and defended his actions, saying that he asked the actress and she agreed to it.
He claims he asked Diane: ‘What I would like to do, with your permission, is just…commit to choking you, with my hands, in a closeup. We do it for 30 seconds or so, and then I stop. If we need to do it a second time, we will. After that, that’s it.
Tarantino asked Diane: ‘Are you down to committing to it so we can get a really good look? It’ll be twice, and only for this amount of time, and the stunt guy will monitor the whole thing’
Diane said of the director: ‘He treated me with utter respect and never abused his power or forced me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with’
Cast: The 2009 movie also stars Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson
‘Are you down to committing to it so we can get a really good look? It’ll be twice, and only for this amount of time, and the stunt guy will monitor the whole thing.
‘Diane said, “yeah sure.” She even said on film in an interview, it was a strange request but by that point I trusted Quentin so much that, sure.’
According to the New York Times story, in the case where he choked Uma, ‘Tarantino had done the honors with some of the sadistic flourishes himself, spitting in her face in the scene where Michael Madsen is seen on screen doing it and choking her with a chain in the scene where a teenager named Gogo is on screen doing it’.
Tarantino also pointed out to Deadline that this part in the New York Times article were not direct quotes from Uma but ‘prose written by the author’ after interviews with other cast members.
A 15-year-old interview in which he defended Roman Polanski has also resurfaced amid the controversy.
Polanski was charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, but fled to France before his sentencing.
Despite this, Tarantino insisted Polanski was not a rapist and claimed the girl ‘was down to party with Roman’ – despite co-host Robin Quivers reminding him that she had been drugged and plied with alcohol.
Actress Busy Philipps posted a flurry of angry tweets on Monday night slamming the Pulp Fiction director and saying she’s sorry she ever auditioned for him.
She wrote: ‘F**K this guy. F**k anyone who works with him. I’m embarrassed that I ever auditioned for him. F**k him.’
Though much of Uma Thurman’s interview to the Times was about being attacked by Harvey Weinstein, Tarantino has been facing most of the flack since it was published, so much so that the actress defended him on her Instagram on Monday.
Uma also posted the footage of the moment she crashed into a tree while filming Kill Bill in Mexico, clarifying that he had given it to her and that he was ‘deeply regretful and remains remorseful’ over the incident.
Thurman shared a photograph from the scene which made it into the movie on Thanksgiving when she alluded to how Weinstein had sexually attacked her
Pictured in 2003: Tarantino has broken his silence on the brutal crash involving Uma Thurman on the set of Kill Bill 15 years ago, saying the stunt has been the biggest regret of his life
She made it clear that she blames producer Harvey Weinstein and accused him of lying and destroying evidence.
Tarantino confirmed to Deadline that he was the one who gave the footage to Uma to help her with the Times article.
He said he dug up the 15-year-old footage after speaking to the actress for some time about how she was going to reveal her encounters with Weinstein.
‘Uma and I had talked about it, for a long period of time, deciding how she was going to do it. She wanted clarity on what happened in that car crash, after all these years,’ he said.
Tarantino added the he ‘ended up taking the hit and taking the heat’ when the Times article was published.
The Kill Bill director recalled in great detail the day Thurman was injured while filming the driving scene.
He said no one considered it a stunt given it was just driving, but when Thurman voiced concerns he personally drove down the road to test it out and informed her it was safe.
‘I came in there all happy telling her she could totally do it, it was a straight line, you will have no problem. Uma’s response was… ‘Okay.’ Because she believed me. Because she trusted me.
‘I told her it would be okay. I told her the road was a straight line. I told her it would be safe. And it wasn’t. I was wrong. I didn’t force her into the car. She got into it because she trusted me. And she believed me,’ he said.
‘We did the shot. And she crashed. At first, no one really knew what happened. After the crash, when Uma went to the hospital, I was feeling in total anguish at what had happened.
‘Watching her fight for the wheel… remembering me hammering about how it was safe and she could do it. Emphasizing that it was a straight road, a straight road… the fact that she believed me, and I literally watched this little S curve pop up. And it spins her like a top,’ Tarantino said in the interview.
‘It was heartbreaking. Beyond one of the biggest regrets of my career, it is one of the biggest regrets of my life.’
The Bride’s ride: Uma Thurman released the video footage of her 2002 crash on the set of Kill Bill, showing the moment of impact and aftermath (still from Kill Bill of the footage of ride)
He added that the crash affected their relationship for the next few years, saying: ‘It wasn’t like we didn’t talk. But a trust was broken.’
In her Instagram post, Uma said the director did the ‘right thing’ by sharing the footage.
‘Quentin Tarantino, was deeply regretful and remains remorseful about this sorry event, and gave me the footage years later so i could expose it and let it see the light of day, regardless of it most likely being an event for which justice will never be possible,’ Thurman wrote.
‘He also did so with full knowledge it could cause him personal harm, and i am proud of him for doing the right thing and for his courage.
‘THE COVER UP after the fact is UNFORGIVABLE.’
Uma then went on to accuse Weinstein and her agents at CAA for the ‘cover up’.
‘For this I hold Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein solely responsible,’ Uma wrote.
‘They lied, destroyed evidence, and continue to lie about the permanent harm they caused and then chose to suppress.’
She goes on to note: ‘The cover up did have malicious intent, and shame on these three for all eternity.’
She finishes by laying into her agency at the time: ‘CAA never sent anyone to Mexico. I hope they look after other clients more respectfully if they in fact want to do the job for which they take money with any decency.’
Pictured in 2004: Thurman claims Weinstein forced himself on her in a hotel room in London between Pulp Fiction (1994) and Kill Bill (2003)
The incident occurred as they finished filming for Kill Bill Vol. 1. It would later be split into two parts by Weinstein who was the producer (Thurman is pictured above in a scene from the film)
The footage shows the actress struggling to control the car as she careens off a dirt road and into a tree. She can be seen lying motionless and limp in the driver’s seat until she is pulled out by members of the crew.
Uma said she thought she was paralyzed by the stunt and has permanent injuries.
The incident occurred as they finished filming for Kill Bill Vol. 1. It would later be split into two parts by Weinstein who was the producer.
The scene in question is the famous moment Thurman’s character at the end of the first film along a winding road.
Thurman said in the Times article that she was hesitant about filming it herself and wanted a stunt double to do the difficult driving because, she claimed, the car was unsafe.
It had been reconfigured from a stick-shift to an automatic and Thurman claimed a crew member expressed concern to her that it was not working properly.
‘Quentin came in my trailer and didn’t like to hear no, like any director.
‘He was furious because I’d cost them a lot of time. But I was scared. He said: ‘I promise you the car is fine. It’s a straight piece of road. Hit 40 miles per hour or your hair won’t blow the right way and I’ll make you do it again’.
‘But that was a deathbox that I was in. The seat wasn’t screwed down properly. It was a sand road and it was not a straight road,’ she said.
She said once she returned to set: ‘Quentin and I had an enormous fight, and I accused him of trying to kill me. And he was very angry at that, I guess understandably, because he didn’t feel he had tried to kill me.’
For years, she said they continued to fight over it and she begged him to show her the footage but he always refused.
Afterwards, Thurman’s lawyer sent a letter to Miramax demanding a copy of the video.
They refused to give it to her unless she agreed that she would not hold the production company accountable for ‘future pain or suffering’.
Thurman refused to agree to those terms and has, for the last 15 years, been trying to get the footage from Tarantino himself.
‘We were in a terrible fight for years. We had to then go through promoting the movies. It was all very thin ice.
‘We had a fateful fight at Soho House in New York in 2004 and we were shouting at each other because he wouldn’t let me see the footage and he told me that was what they had all decided,’ she said.
After the Weinstein scandal broke, Tarantino gave it to her. She equates it with him ‘atoning’ for the danger he put her in and the pair are on good terms.
‘Quentin finally atoned by giving it to me after 15 years, right? Not that it matters now, with my permanently damaged neck and my screwed-up knees.’
She has since handed it, along with her correspondence with Miramax, to police in the hope they will be held accountable.
HARVEY WEINSTEIN DENIES ATTACKING UMA THURMAN
In response to Thurman’s claims, a representative for Weinstein sent photographs to DailyMail.com of the pair together in the years after the attack in an attempt to disprove her.
‘In accompanying statement, they said: ‘We have pulled a number of images that demonstrate the strong relationship Mr. Weinstein and Ms. Thurman had had over the years and we wish the New York Times would have published them.
One of the images Weinstein’s reps shared which he says disproves Thurman’s claims is this one from a luncheon taken in January 2016
‘Mr. Weinstein acknowledges making an awkward pass 25 years ago at Ms. Thurman in England after misreading her signals, after a flirtatious exchange in Paris, for which he immediately apologized and deeply regrets. However, her claims about being physically assaulted are untrue. And this is the first time we have heard those details.
‘There was no physical contact during Mr. Weinstein’s awkward pass and Mr. Weinstein is saddened and puzzled as to “why” Ms. Thurman, someone he considers a colleague and a friend, waited 25 years to make these allegations public, noting that he and Ms. Thurman have shared a very close and mutually beneficial working relationship where they have made several very successful film projects together.
‘This is the first time we are hearing that she considered Mr. Weinstein an enemy and the pictures of their history tell a completely different story.
‘There will be more are detailed response later from Mr. Weinstein’s attorney, Ben Brafman.