Burt Reynolds' Clash With A Renowned Director Involved A Ridiculous Irish Accent
Burt Reynolds passed away five years ago, yet the legend of the actor, sex symbol, and famous mustache-wearer continues to grow even now. The most recent Reynolds anecdote to circulate comes courtesy of "Boogie Nights," where the "Smokey and the Bandit" star infamously clashed with a then 27-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson.
Stories of Reynolds' displeasure with the filming experience on the 1997 porn-centric comedic drama are widely known by now, and The Washington Post even reported once that he fired his agent after doing the film. In an interview with GQ in 2015, Reynolds admitted that he'd be hesitant to work with Anderson — who earned a Best Writing Oscar nomination for "Boogie Nights," and 10 additional nominations since — again. As Reynolds put it, "Personality-wise, we didn't fit." At the time, the actor didn't mince words, saying that during the "Boogie Nights" shoot he found Anderson "young and full of himself" and explaining that the director acted as if he was discovering each shot he did for the first time in movie history. "It wasn't original," Reynolds quipped, "But if you have to steal, steal from the best."
Jack Horner was Irish for a day
Now, "Boogie Nights" aficionados have a new bit of lore to add to the legend, courtesy of Josh Horowitz's "Happy Sad Confused" podcast. Horowitz spoke with Reynolds' "Boogie Nights" co-star Mark Wahlberg in a recent episode, and the actor confirmed that Reynolds started having issues with the film on day one — and pitched an Irish accent for his character that he thought might improve things.
"I remember the first day, he comes in and Paul comes to me and we're about to shoot the scene where we meet in the back of the kitchen, and Paul goes, 'You know, Burt came to me, and he doesn't really understand my rhythm of writing, so he wants to use an Irish accent,'" Wahlberg recalled on the podcast. "I was like, 'What?' He was like, 'Yeah, he thinks this is going to be more helpful to kind of find the character. Just go with it.'"
Wahlberg says he assumed this was a joke Reynolds was playing to keep him on his toes, until, "All of a sudden, [Reynolds] goes, 'Oh, you're a dancer, aren'tcha?'" — with the promised Irish brogue. The actor was startled into laughter, which didn't go over well with his more seasoned co-star. "I go, 'What the f**k!' and start laughing. [Reynolds replied] 'Don't you ever laugh at me, kid.'" Wahlberg added that Reynolds dropped the Irish accent by the next scene, so the introduction eventually had to be revisited at the end of production. "Of course, at the end of the movie, 'Hey, we're going to take another stab at that introduction scene,' so we reshot the scene," the actor recalled.
Wahlberg thinks Reynolds saw the Boogie Nights script as beneath him
While this story may make Reynolds seem like the butt of the joke, Wahlberg also explained where he thought his co-star was coming from. "[Burt Reynolds] was the biggest movie star in the world for over a decade," Walhberg said on the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, explaining that he saw his character's lines — which included extremely crude language — as "so beneath him." The actor reasoned that Reynolds "blew his top a couple of times" because he didn't "understand the potential of this movie that was obviously set in the world of pornography, but it was about some very interesting characters and that had a lot of potential to be something special."
Other "Boogie Nights" co-stars have come to similar conclusions before. "I think Burt was sort of clueless as to what we were doing," William H. Macy told Vulture in 2022. "I think all of us very early in the film thought, 'Holy crap, this is extraordinary,' and I think Burt was clueless. And he trashed the film after we wrapped — up until the time he got an Academy Award nomination." Reynolds earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for "Boogie Nights," in what would turn out to be the only Academy Award nod in his career.