Famous Co-Stars Who Didn't Get Along in Real Life
Oftentimes, co-stars describe each other as family. But other times, their relationships are actually quite rocky. Here are some co-stars who didn't get along behind the scenes.
Oftentimes, co-stars describe each other as second family. Some of them even end up falling in love. Other times, their relationships are actually quite rocky when the cameras stop rolling. Co-star feuds are some of Hollywood's best-kept secrets, but when actors finally spill about how they really feel when it comes to their actor counterparts on set, that's when things get interesting. From celebs who ran away in fear after kissing their co-star to the ones who ended up leaving the show mid-season to avoid ever speaking again, these co-stars, ahead, reportedly didn't get along behind the scenes. With the amount of drama here, you're going to want some popcorn.
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Jennifer Aniston and Jay Mohr
Aniston was reportedly not thrilled when actor Jay Mohr beat out her then-boyfriend Tate Donovan to be her on-screen love interest in the movie, Picture Perfect (1997).
Mohr says instead of taking her anger out on the studio, Aniston took it out on him instead. In an interview with ELLE from 2010, he explained how it was one of the worst filming experiences of his life. “Being on the set of a movie where the leading woman was unhappy with my presence and made it clear from day one.”
He continued, “I hadn’t done that many movies, and even though they screen-tested some pretty famous guys, I somehow snaked into the leading role. The actress said, ‘No way! You’ve got to be kidding me!’ Loudly. Between takes. To other actors on set. I would literally go to my mom’s house and cry.”
Harrison Ford and Sean Young
On the set of Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi classic, Blade Runner, Harrison Ford and Sean Young played lovers in a futuristic Los Angeles. However, when the cameras stopped rolling, the two reportedly couldn't stand each other. It got so bad that the film crew nicknamed their love scene "the hate scene."
Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando
When filming the romantic comedy A Countess from Hong Kong, Loren detailed in her memoir, Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life, an uncomfortable day on set when her co-star groped her.
“All of a sudden, he put his hands on me. I turned in all tranquility and blew in his face, like a cat stroked the wrong way and said, ‘Don’t you ever dare to do that again. Never again!'"
She continued, “As I pulverized him with my eyes, he seemed small, defenseless, almost a victim of his own notoriety. He never did it again, but it was very difficult working with him after that.”
Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe
You would think when asked what it was like to kiss your co-star, you would say something nice, but Tony Curtis didn't go that route. The actor said of his Some Like It Hot co-star, Marilyn Monroe, "It was like kissing Hitler."
Before filming the famous movie, the pair had actually dated in real life, but the feelings had changed by the time they started shooting. "She'd gone funny, her mind was all over the place," he said. He then spoke about the scene in which the couple kisses on a yacht (pictured here), saying, "It was awful. She nearly choked me to death by deliberately sticking her tongue down my throat into my windpipe."
Miley Cyrus and Emily Osment
The on-screen best friends found it hard to keep up those feelings off screen. In her memoir, Miles to Go, Miley Cyrus shared that she and Emily Osment didn't get along off screen.
"The show felt real to me, and I wanted my relationship with Lilly to feel real too. I knew it didn't have to—show business is show business–but I was disappointed," she wrote. "There were times when I didn't think we could ever be friends. We just couldn't figure out how to get along."
The co-stars ended up working out their feelings and are friends today. They recently had a reunion over Instagram to celebrate 10 years of Hannah Montana.
Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep
On the set of Kramer vs. Kramer, Meryl Streep said Dustin Hoffman wasn't easy to work alongside. Some incidents include the time when Streep got approved to make some changes to a scene by writer-director Robert Benton.
When Hoffman saw the changes, he angrily shouted, per The Telegraph, "Meryl, why don't you stop carrying the flag for feminism and just act the scene." Streep commented on the film's scene of spousal abuse to The New York Times and stated how her co-star went overboard.
Then, of course, there was the scene when Hoffman literally slapped his co-star. "This was my first movie, and it was my first take in my first movie, and he just slapped me," she said. "And you see it in the movie. It was overstepping."
Years later, while playing a game of "Marry, Shag, Kill" on Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, Streep chose "to kill" Hoffman without question.
Nina Dobrev and Paul Wesley
During their first five months of filming, Dobrev revealed on the Directionally Challenged podcast that her and Welsey couldn't stand each other. "I respected Paul Wesley, I didn't like Paul Wesley," she said on the show. But don't worry, the blood-sucking co-stars ended up working things out and are friends today.
"But, of everyone [from the Vampire Diaries cast], I think I probably see him the most and hang out with him the most…We are probably the closest," she said on the podcast. "We hang out a lot. We're really good friends. And I love his wife. It's so funny how time changes everything because I never thought that he would be one of my best friends."
Joan Collins and John Forsythe
On Andy Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, Collins shared the soap opera co-stars didn't talk for an entire season.
"[At] the People's Choice Awards, we won as a whole company, and we were told that when we were being presented with the award, it was going to be given to John," she said on the late-night talk show. "However, they gave it to me. He didn't like that. I said, 'Oh, thank you very much, I'm going to give it to our fearless leader,' and he said, 'She's said enough,' and that was it. And it was very unpleasant, I have to say. It wasn't nice."
Debbie Reynolds and Gene Kelly
The famous musical, Singin' in the Rain, captured hearts, but it wasn't exactly a joy to make for some of its actors. In Reynolds' memoir, Unsinkable, she recalled her time on set with Kelly, writing, "He came to rehearsals and criticized everything I did and never gave me a word of encouragement."
She also detailed what it was like when their characters kissed. In her memoir she said, "Gene took me tightly in his arms...and shoved his tongue down my throat. 'Eeew! What was that?' I screeched, breaking free of his grasp and spitting. I ran around frantic, yelling for some Coca-Cola to cleanse my mouth. It was the early 1950s, and I was an innocent kid who had never been French-kissed. It felt like an assault. I was stunned that this 39-year-old man would do this to me."
Selma Blair and Charlie Sheen
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blair voiced her concerns about Sheen's work ethic while filming two episodes a week that often found him with more than 40 pages of dialogue per script. Sheen then fired Blair by sending her a nasty text in which he called her a "c**t" and threatened to leave the show if she returned to set. She left the show.
In 2017, during a segment on Watch What Happens Live, he was asked to rank some previous co-stars from favorite to least favorite to work with. He commented on his former co-star Blair and his former Two and a Half Men costar Jenny McCarthy saying, "I'd like to mash those two together and then kick them to the curb. They deserve each other."
Jerome Flynn and Lena Headey
Despite having ample opportunity (and good plot reasons) to have met in Westeros, Flynn and Headey's Game of Thrones characters, Bronn and Cersei, have conspicuously never shared the screen. Why? Sources have said that the former real-life couple aren't on speaking terms and refuse to work together.
"Jerome and Lena aren't on speaking terms anymore and they are never in the same room at the same time," a source told The Telegraph in 2014. "It's a pity because they appeared to have patched things up for a while, but now the word is they should be kept apart at all costs."
Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson
Though rumors that the actors outright hated each other behind the scenes don't seem to be true (thankfully), Luke and Lorelai's on-screen chemistry didn't translate to an awesome relationship off camera.
"It's fine," Graham explained to TV Guide when asked about her relationship with Patterson. "I think these characters have great chemistry and that does mirror our chemistry as people. We're not intimates."
When the reporter asked if they were "best friends," she gave a quick and definitive "no" as her answer.
Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte
The vibe between Roberts and Nolte was so bad that their on-screen romance in I Love Trouble was a hard sell—the chemistry just wasn't there. A 1994 story in the Los Angeles Times explored the friction between the actors on set.
"Roberts reportedly wasn't thrilled with Nolte's machismo, so she would deride and insult her co-star," said the publication. "Some on the set claim that he became so annoyed with her attitude that he would do things to agitate her even more. The discord was so intense, the sources say, the two played more to stand-ins than to each other."
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis
Crawford and Davis' feud on the set of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was so infamous that it was the subject of the first season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series, Feud. The drama between the Hollywood legends was said to have started when Crawford married Franchot Tone, who just happened to be the love of Davis' life. "I have never forgiven her for that, and never will," Davis once said of Crawford in an interview years later.
Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall
Rumors swirled that the two Sex and the City actresses weren't great friends in real life, with claims that Cattrall had become upset when she learned that Parker earned more than her co-stars. In November 2009, Parker publicly denied the feud telling ELLE, "I don't think anybody wants to believe that I love Kim. I adore her. I wouldn't have done the movie without her."
Years later, talks of a third SATC movie in the works were shut down when rumors about Catrall being a diva started circulating; Hollywood gossip insinuated that the film wouldn't happen because she was holding up negotiations with her demands. Catrall took personal offense to the rumors and fired back by throwing some shade SJP's way.
"This is really where I take to task the people from Sex and the City and specifically Sarah Jessica Parker in that I think she could have been nicer. I really think she could have been nicer. I don’t know what her issue is, I never have.”
Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth
The actresses starred together on the '90s hit Beverly Hills: 90210, but Doherty left the show after season four reportedly due to problems getting along with her cast mates. In a 2014 interview with E! Online, Garth opened up about her own feud with Doherty.
"We were locked in this sound stage for 14–16 hours every day. There were times when we loved each other and there were times when we wanted to claw each other's eyes out," she explained.
Shannen Doherty and Alyssa Milano
Doherty faced co-star drama again on the set of her WB series, Charmed. After several reports of behind-the-scenes drama with Alyssa Milano, Doherty left the series after the third season.
"There was too much drama on the set and not enough passion for the work," Doherty explained in an interview with Entertainment Tonight about her departure from the series. "I'm 30 years old and I don't have time for drama in my life anymore."
The co-stars have since made amends. In 2017, Milano told E! that they were in regular contact. "Shannen and I talk a lot on Twitter via [direct messenger] and I spoke to her maybe two or three days ago," she said. "She was on vacation and we decided that we're going to get together. That date has not been set yet."
Naya Rivera and Lea Michele
In her memoir, Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes and Growing Up, the late Naya Rivera addressed her long-rumored feud with Glee co-star Lea Michele.
"One of the Glee writers once said that Lea and I were like two sides of the same battery, and that about sums us up," Rivera wrote. "We are both strong-willed and competitive—not just with each other but with everyone—and that's not a good mixture."
Stacy London and Clinton Kelly
One of the best parts of the TLC makeover show What Not to Wear was the natural chemistry between fashion gurus Stacy London and Clinton Kelly, but as it turns out, their friendship wasn't as rocksteady as it appeared. When Kelly released his memoir I Hate Everyone, Except You in 2017, he hinted that there was some serious tension between the co-stars.
London didn't take kindly to the book and ended up blocking Kelly on social media. "I can’t stop people from the way they behave. I can’t stop them from being angry with me, hurtful to me, or indifferent to me," the fashionista later wrote on Instagram. "I can block ex-friends and ex-lovers, people I feel wronged by, but to what end? For the most part, these people aren’t even looking at my accounts in the first place and even if they were, why would being able to see this highlight reel of my life matter in the slightest?”
Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj
The pop superstars infamously butted heads when they served as judges together on American Idol.
"Mariah has been saying little things to jab at Nicki from day one of shooting," a source told People of the feud. "Mariah doesn't think Nicki can sing and doesn't think she should be judging folks. Nicki has been taking all of the jabs, but on this particular day she lost it."
Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel
We first met Tisdale and Grabeel in the 2006 Disney musical phenomenon High School Musical, where they starred as fame-hungry twins Sharpay and Ryan Evans. While the two may have seemed as thick as thieves, the actors weren't actually friends while they were filming the HSM franchise.
Tisdale spilled the tea on their relationship when they reunited in 2017 on her YouTube channel. "We were not close. We were not good friends—let's be honest. It's been 10 years, so we can talk about it." she laughingly admitted. "We hated each other. Like, I'm not kidding."
"We didn't get off on the best foot," Grabeel chimed in.
America Ferrera and Lindsay Lohan
Of all of the guest appearances on ABC's smash sitcom Ugly Betty, Lohan's run on the show might have been the most tumultuous. The actresses reportedly didn't get along, with a source saying that "America couldn't handle Lindsay stealing her thunder." There were even rumors that Ferrera lobbied to have Lohan's arc cut short.
Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny
Fans shippped Mulder and Scully for years, but the stars didn't always get along in real life. "Familiarity breeds contempt," Dochovny once explained. "We used to argue about nothing. We couldn't stand the sight of each other."
Shonda Rhimes and Katherine Heigl
Heigl hasn't headlined many major films or television shows since her departure from Grey's Anatomy, and many suspect that it's due to a falling out with Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes. When Heigl earned an Emmy nomination for her role as Izzy Stevens in 2008, the actress actually opted out because she wasn't given enough quality material to even be considered for an Emmy. "I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials." Heigl explained in a statement that year.
Rhimes kept it professional, but the damage was already done. Even when Heigl publicly expressed a desire to revisit her role on the show, the showrunner coolly declined. "There are no Heigls in this situation," Rhimes said of the Scandal cast in a 2014 The Hollywood Reporter interview. "I don't put up with bullshit or nasty people. I don't have time for it."
The Cast and Crew of 'Grey's Anatomy'
Heigl wasn't the only Grey's star involved in beef. Many of her castmates were also dealing with their own in-house feuds. Most famously, Isaiah Washington was fired from the ABC medical drama after it was revealed that he used a homophobic slur towards T.R. Knight during an intense argument with Patrick Dempsey. Washington issued several public apologies following the incident, but was only able to return to the show for a guest appearance years later, much to the ire of some of the cast and fans.
In 2015, creator Shonda Rhimes confessed to killing off characters on her show because she didn't like them, and fans immediately began speculating that she was referring to Dempsey. Known for being somewhat of a diva, it's likely that his character Derek Shepherd was written off the show because he didn't get along well with the showrunner.
Blake Lively and Leighton Meester
Sorry, Gossip Girl fans—your favorite Upper East Siders aren't really as close as you thought they were. Lively and Meester reportedly had a strained relationship behind the scenes, which sources attributed to long working days on set. One Gossip Girl source spelled out the actresses' issues with each other plainly: "Leighton thinks Blake is an egomaniac who views her time on the TV set as slumming. And Blake feels stifled. She’s just ignoring her co-star because she knows bigger things are in store."
In response to the drama, Lively's publicist didn't even really try to spin the rumors. "Blake and Leighton have never been best friends, and never professed to be,” the statement clarified. "Blake goes to work, does her job, and goes home."
Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp
The high-profile actors reportedly didn't hit it off on the set of their 2010 film, The Tourist. "Their chemistry was supposed to fly off the charts, but in private, they're not getting along," sources said. "She was disappointed that he didn't get in better shape for the role and that he didn't want to cut his hair. Johnny retreats to his own trailer until he's called out again. He think she's really full of herself."
George Takei and William Shatner
Diehard Trekkies were obsessed with the camaraderie on the USS Enterprise, but as it turns out not everyone aboard the starship was on good terms. Most notably, Shatner and Takei spent much of their tenure on Star Trek giving each other the cold shoulder, and the bad blood only grew over time. In his 1994 autobiography, To the Stars, Takei claimed that Shatner was self-centered and egotistical; he also appeared on many television shows to roast his former castmate.
Shatner didn't pull any punches either. In an interview, the actor behind Captain Kirk went in on his co-star. "There’s such a sickness there, it’s so painfully obvious that there’s a psychosis there," he said. "There must be something else inside George that is festering, and it makes him so unhappy that he takes it out on me, in effect a total stranger."
Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn
The actors' differing work styles reportedly caused tension on the set of their holiday movie, Four Christmases. Sources said Witherspoon wanted to rehearse extensively while Vaughn preferred a more improvisational approach.
"Vince rolls onto set in the morning looking like he just came in from a night out, while Reese will arrive early looking camera-ready," reported the Daily News. "Then Reese tries to force Vince into blocking out each scene and running through their lines as Vince tries to convince her that he's an ad-libber and wants to play around and see where the scene goes."
Heidi Montag and Lauren Conrad
Though it was ultimately revealed that much of the MTV reality show was scripted, Conrad and Montag's relationship on The Hills did actually come to an end. The former friends and co-stars started beefing when Montag's husband, Spencer Pratt, spread a rumor about Conrad making a sex tape with her boyfriend. To this day, their relationship has been icy, despite efforts from Montag to make amends.
"Lauren just holds grudges a little bit," Montag said on a 2018 episode of the #NoFilter podcast with Zack Peter. "I’d be willing to move forward and put things behind us. We would never be the way that we were again, but it would be fun to maybe catch up one day and be mature and be like, 'Hey that was crazy, I wish you the best,' type-of-thing. But I don’t think she would ever be ready for that."
Will Smith and Janet Hubert
Will Smith and his Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-star Janet Hubert had an infamously strained working relationship, which ultimately led to her character being recast in season four. Hubert has said she would never reprise the role for a reunion show, claiming that the Hollywood icon is an "egomaniac."
Smith maintains that he never purposely offended her. In 1993, he offered an Atlanta radio station some insight into the bad blood between them. "[Hubert] said once, 'I've been in the business for 10 years and this snotty-nosed punk comes along and gets a show.' No matter what, to her I'm just the Anti-Christ."
Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush
In the case of One Tree Hill co-stars Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush, love came first and then came the on-set awkwardness. The co-stars married in April 2005 and separated just a few months later in September 2005. They both continued as series regulars through 2009. Awkward.
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Tyrese Gibson
When Johnson joined the Fast and Furious franchise in 2011, fans across the world rejoiced. However, as the former wrestler-turned-action-star's success mounted, so did tensions between him and his castmates, particularly Gibson. Gibson, who had been part of franchise since its inception, took special offense to the news that Johnson had been selected to star in his own spinoff film, Hobbs & Shaw. He took his complaints to the internet, blasting his co-star for putting himself before the Fast and Furious family. "If you move forward with that #Hobbs Movie you will have purposely ignored the heart to heart moment we had in my sprinter," the singer wrote out on Instagram. "I don’t wanna hear from you until you remember what we talked about."
Johnson was unbothered. In an appearance on Watch What Happens Live, he addressed the situation for the first and last time. "I always feel like a beef requires two people to actually jump in it, and it was really one-sided, and he had voiced his opinion a lot on social media...We haven't talked, and I don't see where we would, and, to me, there's no need to have a conversation."
Betty White and Bea Arthur
Apparently those barbs Dorothy spat at Rose on Golden Girls weren't just acting. In 2011, White admitted that Arthur didn't care for her behind the scenes. "Bea had a reserve. She was not that fond of me," she said. "She found me a pain in the neck sometimes. It was my positive attitude—and that made Bea mad sometimes. Sometimes if I was happy, she'd be furious!"
Ariana Grande and Victoria Justice
When their Nickelodeon show, Victorious, was cancelled, Grande took to social media to subtly point blame at her former co-star.
"Sweetheart, the only reason Victorious ended is because 1 girl didn't want to do it," Grande wrote. "She chose to do a solo tour instead of a cast tour. If we had done a cast tour Nickelodeon would have ordered another season of Victorious while Sam and Cat filmed simultaneously but she chose otherwise. I'm sick of this bs."
Teri Hatcher and Marcia Cross
Teri Hatcher reportedly didn't get along with her Desperate Housewives co-stars (Eva Longoria called her a "loner"), but things were especially tense with Cross. Longoria said that she and "Marcia [Cross] and Felicity [Huffman] were a lot closer because we are just girlie girls who like to be in each other's company. Teri didn't."
Heather McDonald and Chelsea Handler
Though things were all smiles on set of The Chelsea Lately Show, the energy was anything but easy between McDonald and her boss. "I lived in fear, 100 percent lived in fear,” the comedienne admitted. “I enjoyed my time there, I was happy, but I mean something would happen and my heart would be beating and I would be like, ‘Is this it?’—you know? And then somehow I just managed to keep surviving.”
Handler wasn't very sympathetic, however. In a 2016 interview with Howard Stern, she fired back: "I could have fired her. I did not fire her. She had a job for four more years. I never hung out with her personally again. So I hope she was living in fear."
Michael Bay and Megan Fox
After starring in the first two Transformers films, Fox was fired from the franchise when she spoke up about the personality of her director, Michael Bay.
"He’s like Napoleon and he wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation,” Fox said. “He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s endearing to watch him.”
The backlash was almost immediate—Fox was swiftly replaced (at the request of executive producer Steven Spielberg!) by another actress and never mentioned in the franchise again.
Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger
The Terms of Endearment actresses were reportedly at each other's throats while they filmed the Oscar-winning drama, and even got into numerous physical altercations. When MacLaine won the Oscar in the Best Actress category for her role in Terms of Endearment, the feud worsened because Winger was in that same category.
Ever outspoken, Winger didn't bother refuting the rumors. "I can't deny that we fought,'' she told The New York Times in 1986. ''We challenged ourselves, and when we got tired of challenging ourselves, we challenged each other."
Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion
Before Castle came to an end, the off-camera relationship of its leads was notoriously tense. "Stana Katic and Nathan Fillion completely despise each other," a source told Us Weekly. "They will not speak when they are off set, and this has been going on for seasons now."
Bianca Rodriguez is the Audience Development Manager at Future, covering fashion, beauty, and more for Marie Claire, Who What Wear US and Who What Wear UK. In addition to spearheading SEO content across brands—whether writing about wardrobe must-haves or strategizing how to make eye-catching content—she is also an avid reader with a deep love and knowledge for books of all genres. More often than not, you can find her lounging with a good book on the weekend.
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