Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight most recently appeared in Megalopolis together, but things behind the scenes weren’t exactly on the best of terms between them before that. The Transformers alum confessed in the upcoming Megadoc, which is a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed dream project, that he and Voight had a fallout because of their conflicting political beliefs.
LaBeouf recalled in the documentary about him and Voight (via Entertainment Weekly):
We had a big fight on the phone where I told him I was going to come to his house and we were going to fist fight, and I hung up the phone. Didn’t talk to him for years.
As is already pretty evident, Voight is an avid supporter of the Republican Donald Trump, and is even one of the president’s “Special Envoys to Hollywood.” LaBeouf, on the other hand, has a different perspective that falls far from Voight’s political views. In fact, he even installed a piece entitled He Will Not Divide Us in response to the Trump presidency during the period in which he was a conceptual artist.
Over the years, the Midnight Cowboy star has expressed his support for the Republicans and Trump, and even their controversial policies that have been condemned by many other Hollywood celebrities, one too many times. He has voiced his dissatisfaction and criticism of the Democrats (see CNN, X, and Newsweek). Talking about their political beliefs, the Lawless
Shia LaBeouf Had to Make Amends With Jon Voight Before Megalopolis
In Megalopolis, Shia LaBeouf plays the role of Clodio Pulcher while Jon Voight embodies the character of Hamilton Crassus III, i.e., Adam Driver’s Cesar Catilina’s cousin and uncle, respectively. As LaBeouf shared in Megadoc, he read the first version of the script “about five years ago,” when Coppola did a table read.
And in the time from that read to this film, I had basically f—ed my whole life up,” LaBeouf admitted.
This presumably includes all the controversies he has garnered over the years, including the s-x-al battery lawsuit that FKA Twigs filed against him (which was recently settled, per EW), and even that one time he got into a heated debate about french fries (see YouTube).
Nonetheless, when it came down to working on Coppola’s flick, the two had to put their differences aside and bury the hatchet. As he continued to share,
I was in the midst of doing my ninth step in this program I’m in, and I had to go make amends to Voight because Voight’s politics and mine are very different. I love him very much.
Either way, fortunately, Francis Ford Coppola’s movie ostensibly had the two once again getting back on good terms and amicably moving on in their lives, not letting their conflicting political beliefs get between them anymore.
Jon Voight Was Shia LaBeoufʼs “Mentor” From a Young Age
While that’s that, Shia LaBeouf also got candid about the relationship he shared with Jon Voight before their political views split them apart. The two had worked together two times before Megalopolis, i.e., first in 2003’s action-comedy Holes, and then in Transformers in 2007. So the co-stars weren’t really strangers to each other, and working together.
LaBeouf said of his co-star in the documentary,
He was like my mentor from a young age. He was like the first real actor I ever met, and he’s the first one who put me on to [Dustin] Hoffman’s repertoire… He would sit in a room with me and watch all these movies back to back, and [that] made me fall in love with the process and the craft, because before that, I was just a poor kid making money.
Well, not being on the same page as his mentor must have seriously hurt LaBeouf, leading to the differences between them. Still, the highlight is that everything is okay now, and that’s what matters. Don’t you agree?
Megadoc is set to release on September 19.
